patch 3.2 Archives - Anexxia's Bible of Dreams

It’s not Vile Sorcery…It’s the Badge Gear!

Since 3.2 dropped, I've noticed something afoot in my raids and 5-mans. And on WoW-Heroes for that matter. Our tanks are staying alive easier. Our healers yawn into their palms in heroic ToC. Suddenly our gear level is on par with being ready to step into 25-man ToC…but it's not vile sorcery — it's the badge gear!

Don't get me wrong — our guild has a number of skilled players who have been making serious efforts in raids all year long. But this past week was the first night that we ever cleared every boss up to Vezax in 3 hours and 15 minutes. We didn't all suddenly have more skill, or more experience. But we did have significant gear upgrades all around.

I personally upgraded my Naxx 10 OH in Ulduar, then used badges to upgrade my Naxx 25 chest to T8.5 and my T8 helm to 8.5. That may not sound like much upgrade-wise, but I can tell you my WoW Heroes suggested instances jumped to the highest available tier (as did a solid 30 of my guildies.) Previously, we had closer to 10 at that level, and I was not one of them.

Yes, I saw Gevlon's experiment with his raid of blue-clad (tho as he admitted class/buff optimized group). And they did great DPS. But I have also been raiding for well over 3 years now, through AQ in vanilla, to BT in BC, and now through Yogg Saron in Ulduar, and I can tell you for sure that a big dose of gear upgrades does make a visible impact on your raid. No, it can't take a mediocre group of layabouts and hand them success. But it can give you the extra bit of avoidance and dps and healing you need to push you into success.

As my raid leader Garkas said to me last week: "The line between success and failure can be a thin one." I'm glad Blizzard gave us all that extra edge — and the lockout period extensions — to help casual guilds like ours achieve our dreams.

Once I have time to catch my breath, I'll be posting a guide to upgrades to shoot for with your Conquest and Triumph badges.

Happy Adventuring!

Leveling my Mage 58-68 in the Post-patch 3.2 World

In two weeks of moderate playing, that also included a significant amount of raiding and Conquest badge farming on my main, my baby mage sped from 58 through the Dark Portal to Outlands, and up to 68 and into Northrend this weekend. This is thanks primarily to the many alt leveling changes that dropped in Patch 3.2.

Despite my long-standing dislike of Hellfire Peninsula, I forced the mage to start there, knowing it would quickly provide her with significant staff, hat, and boot upgrades. I did not need the chestpiece since she is rocking the new badge heirloom chest in addition to the shoulders. Together, these pieces provide a 20% XP increase from both questing and killing monsters. This is on top of any rested increases she had from time-to-time.

As soon as she dinged 60, she purchased her flying mount, now available at Thrallmar. This was the final key component to her zooming through the next 8 levels.

I cherry-picked my way through my favorite quests in Hellfire, Zangermarsh, Terrokar Forest, and Nagrand, hitting all the key quests with gear upgrades. I made sure to stop over in Mok’Nathal for the cooking recipe quests, and in Netherstorm for the cool pink goggles. I fully explored the map in each zone, grabbing the flight paths too. Each uncovered zone netted 1200 or so XP on average; in my final day in Outland as I finished up and got the Outland exploration achievement, I earned a solid 6 bars from exploring alone.

Some reminders for mages in this leveling phase:

Be sure to go back to Ashzara any time after 60 to quest for your polymorph pig spell
You can learn your Shattrath teleport at 60, then the portal at 65
Especially if you have the boost from badge gear, keep up your mage armor at most times; the extra mana regen can keep you going from evocation cooldown to evocation cooldown, instead of having to drink every few pulls

I have not yet started any Northrend questing, but I did go through a few essential ready steps:

My 80 sent her the heirloom tome of cold weather flight(costs $1,000 g from the cold weather flying trainer in Dalaran) so she could immediately start flying at 68
I flew from Vengeance landing to Moa’ki Harbor, then up to Dalaran, grabbing flight paths as I went
Once in Dalaran, I set my hearth there (can train for the teleport at 71)
Got started on the cooking dailies

It will be interesting to see if her leveling velocity stays the course now that she is in Northrend, or if it is slowed down by virtue of having more folks out there jockeying for quest mobs, etc.

Ding! My First Post-patch 60 Takes the Plunge…

This past Sunday, my baby mage hit 58 and you know what that means…she heeded the call to trek to Outlands. Only, it’s not quite the same epic journey you might remember it to have been. Rather than flying to Swamp of Sorrows then making the long trek by slow mount to the Dark Portal, she hopped into the convenient Dark Portal portal in Org, and hopped on her epic bony pony and ran through the portal. Once on the other side, she hopped on a gryph, went all the way to Shattrath, and set her hearth there.

It was not your old timer’s first day in Outlands. And to be honest it was sort of a letdown to have that epicness diminished by convenience. However, given that this is the sixth character I’ve taken to Outlands…the epicness, for me, at this point, is somewhat less important than getting it done already.

Thanks to her BoA chest and shoulders with their 10% XP boost a piece, and to my SO for running me through Stratholme so I could complete all my quests, Monday night I dinged 60.

Dinging 60 had been a meh experience on my last alt, an Alliance priest, during BC. It just meant I had another 10 levels to slog through to get to level cap and start raiding with her. This time was different.

The absolute first thing I did was learn my Tome of Plymorph: Rabbit, which had languished in the bank since the Easter Noblegarden week festivities. Then I ported and trained, and had the bank alt send me 700g so I could train flying and buy a wyvern. At which point I spent a solid 30 minutes flying around Hellfire Peninsula, laughing at the Fel Reavers that would not be allowed to sneak up on poor squishy me.

I’ve now also trained her skinning, herbing, and first aid, with only her cooking stalled in place thanks to a complete lack of desire on my part to farm bear meat. I can save that for another day. It matters more that I got my darn Staff of the Twin Worlds so I can stop feeling bad about the staff that shall not be named I was carrying around (hey– all those scarlets in Strat had one too so nyah!.)

It will be interesting to see how the flying (yes, I will be buying the Northrend flying BoA book) and the XP boost items affect my ability to quest my way through the next 20 levels. On the one hand I will miss the incidental trash I used to have to kill through to get to quest objectives, but on the other hand, there shouldn’t be any dying either.

Stay tuned.

Friday Five: The First Five Things I Did After Patch 3.2 Dropped

Braved the Dalaran lag and followed the Children's Week quest chain given out by Orphan Maton Aria and got myself a baby Wolvar for each of my three 80s.
Trained the new shaman toolbars on my two shamans.
Bought mounts for my lowbies (regular speed kodo for the level 20, and epic pony for the level 54)
Changed in an out of my new druid forms a few times.
Exchange a lot of mail between my Jewelcrafter/Miner and my Alchemist, in support of getting the Alchy ready for the 5 transmutes she must do to learn her cardinal ruby transmute and to provide my JC with her first epic gem to cut.

What did you do first?

Heroics on Patch Night

Well I can’t throw a zeppelin to my Wolvar orphan — either due to lag or b/c he’s not recognized as a friend — but I was able to do the new 5-man. And got a shiny abyss crystal out of it.

Nice to have done it before the lagbomb killed our server.

P.S. I realized while doing this on my other toon, they made a new Small Paper Zeppelin you have to use with your orphan.