WOW, Season 4. Arena or GTFO

[Modo Icecrown]

Arena is pretty retarded now, heh. The only thing that really bugs me about it is that for some classes, the gear is so much better than whatever 5/10man PVE options are available to them. I really wish they would completely separate PVE and PVP.

[The Ancient]

Originally Posted by Modo Icecrown

Arena is pretty retarded now, heh. The only thing that really bugs me about it is that for some classes, the gear is so much better than whatever 5/10man PVE options are available to them. I really wish they would completely separate PVE and PVP.

Really? Which classes have so much better arena loot than badge loot?

[Arbitrary]

I'm not 100% positive because the amount of calculations necessary angers me but Enhancement Shaman.

[Xequecal]

Originally Posted by The Ancient

Really? Which classes have so much better arena loot than badge loot?

All the melee DPS classes. You can pick up chest, legs, belt, gloves, and weapons from badge loot. One of the first four will be ilvl 128 instead of 141. The weapons are often suboptimal (no swords for Rogues) and everything has less sockets in general. Both the new ilvl 141 badge loot and PvP gear are stamina heavy.

PvP loot gives you five armor pieces instead of four, all at ilvl 146. (159 with S4) You can choose the most optimal weapon type and speed for your class.

With the coming of S4, Warlocks and Shadow Priests gain a significant DPS advantage by picking up the spell haste mace/dagger from PvP. You macro your instant-cast spells to switch in the haste weapon, and your spells with cast times to switch in your spell power weapon. Since the cast time is determined at the start of the cast but the damage is determined at the end, and DoT damage is dynamically updated each tick based on how much spell power you have at that moment, this is a large increase in DPS. Every time a Warlock lifetaps or casts a DoT, his next Shadow Bolt is significantly hasted. Every time a Shadow Priest casts SWP, SWD, or VE, his next VT, Mindblast, or Mindflay is significantly hasted.

[The Ancient]

Originally Posted by Xequecal

With the coming of S4, Warlocks and Shadow Priests gain a significant DPS advantage by picking up the spell haste mace/dagger from PvP. You macro your instant-cast spells to switch in the haste weapon, and your spells with cast times to switch in your spell power weapon. Since the cast time is determined at the start of the cast but the damage is determined at the end, and DoT damage is dynamically updated each tick based on how much spell power you have at that moment, this is a large increase in DPS. Every time a Warlock lifetaps or casts a DoT, his next Shadow Bolt is significantly hasted. Every time a Shadow Priest casts SWP, SWD, or VE, his next VT, Mindblast, or Mindflay is significantly hasted.

How does this work? Didn't swapping weapons used to activiate your GCD?

Oh I guess you swap it out after you start casting??

[Zest]

Originally Posted by Xequecal

Since the cast time is determined at the start of the cast but the damage is determined at the end, and DoT damage is dynamically updated each tick based on how much spell power you have at that moment, this is a large increase in DPS. Every time a Warlock lifetaps or casts a DoT, his next Shadow Bolt is significantly hasted. Every time a Shadow Priest casts SWP, SWD, or VE, his next VT, Mindblast, or Mindflay is significantly hasted.

Unfortunately, this is incorrect. Gone are the days of dropping all your DoTs/HoTs and then clicking your ZHC to get the bonus without using charges.

[Xequecal]

Does it work differently for DoTs than it does for healing spells? They changed Lifebloom to use your current +healing on each tick rather than the initial, so people couldn't activate a bunch of temporary +healing buffs and then keep that Lifebloom rolling for huge gains in healing.

I don't play any real DoT classes, but I know on my Paladin when my Tome of Fiery Redemption procs, by Seal of Vengeance DoT stack starts ticking for more.

[Zest]

Maybe stacking effects work differently, but it definitely doesn't work for SPriest or Warlock DoTs.

[Xequecal]

Even then, it would still work, with the exception that you'd never want to cast two instant-casts in a row.

/cast Shadow Word: Pain
/equip Brutal Gladiator's Swift Judgement

/cast Mind Blast
/equip Tempest of Chaos

[Ishad]

I'd say those weapons are better for mana burn spam than anything else.

[Needless]

This is pretty damn offtopic but im starting another paladin, horde this time.. im wondering whats the best method for instance grinding? start and stop levels for each instance?

paladin is 11 atm, should i start RFC or ?


edit, forgot to mention im boxing a mage obviously

[Zerai]

Originally Posted by Needless

This is pretty damn offtopic but im starting another paladin, horde this time.. im wondering whats the best method for instance grinding? start and stop levels for each instance?

paladin is 11 atm, should i start RFC or ?


edit, forgot to mention im boxing a mage obviously

Just quest. Look up dungeons on wowwiki and do all the lines for the quests for the instance..but thats still going to be slower than just questing. With reduced xp for levels and increased xp per quest, you just fly through levels and you won't be able to do all the quests before a lot start greying out.

[Frax]

I'm currently power-leveling a warlock through the 50s using my 70 warrior to clear LBRS over and over for him. The warlock just loots everything and disenchants anything he won't use, sell everything else, repeat. He hasn't killed a single thing since level 48 and is about 10k xp short of 57 at the moment. It's only taken about 4 clears of LBRS and 3 of BRD for those 8 levels. Obviously having a ton of rested between sessions helps a lot at this level, pulling in 500xp per kill as I AE down 4-6 elites at a time almost non-stop adds up pretty quick.

The only issue with a melee class is that you won't be leveling your skills up so fast if a level 70 is doing all the damage/tanking, with my warlock the only thing that will really be lacking is his defense skill. I did do all the quests the first time through. I imagine you could easily level a character from 1-58 or so like this. I just want my warlock to hit 58 and i'll level him normally from Hellfire onward.

[GrobbeeTrull2.0]

Originally Posted by Needless

This is pretty damn offtopic but im starting another paladin, horde this time.. im wondering whats the best method for instance grinding? start and stop levels for each instance?

paladin is 11 atm, should i start RFC or ?


edit, forgot to mention im boxing a mage obviously

Quest grind, run yourself through instances when you need a nice 2h:

- Blackfathom Deep for Reef Axe / Strike of the Hydra
- Razorfen Downs for Corpsemaker
- Camp in Alterac Mountains on your mage for The Pacifier
- Kill Archaedus in Uldaman for The Rockpounder / Stoneslayer
- Quest in Feralas for Will of the Mountain Giant
- Lastly, buy Twig of the World Tree

This will take you to Outland, where you can then quest and instance to your heart's content.

[Zest]

Ret to 36, then swap to prot and kill 3-6 guys at a time solo with zero downtime.