Recently in Telaan Category

I have a lot to do. I am collecting herbs for my guild, as well as for myself. I am debating furiously with myself about inscription and my lowbie hunter, Traluun, and trying to still get in time for job hunting, writing, beta testing, and have a small semblance of a social life. So it is with this in mind that I ask you, my readers, what do you think my priorities should be.

The reason this came up is that in conjunction with the recent beta build 8905, Blizzard's reps have posted feedback requests for all of the currently open dungeons in the beta, from Utgarde Keep to Naxxramas in both 10 and 25 man versions, and I realized that even with Med not even at 74 yet, I have not hit a single instance. Not even a one. I got my starter Death Knight through the old Starting Experience and into Inscription/Herbalism professions, worked a fair bit on Med's blacksmithing, and a bit on Arita's Northrend herbalism and alchemy, but I haven't *done* much in the beta.

Sure, I have moved and been doing renovations, and I haven't had the unregulated time I would like to be working on the beta and live realms. I also find it really hard to go from Medros, level 73 ret Paladin with awesome abilities and the capability to take down the mobs with ease, to Medros, level 70 Paladin, or even Telaan, Level 70 Paladin, or even still Traluun, level 45 Hunter. It's a bit of a shock, you know? A big change in the game and the world.

So, as my readers, I come to you, playtime in hand, and ask for your advice. Do you want more Wrath prep info as I push through the live realms to gather needed materials for the Inscription profession coming in 3.0.2, or should I spend more time on the beta realms, digging through the lore, the stories, and the experiences to give you all a better insight into what awaits us in the wonderful continent of Northrend, from gorlocs and proto drakes to dragon aspects and scarlet lackies? Sound off in the comments!

Here are a few of the random thoughts that have been running through my head lately.

BM can rock, but most likely at 70 - I have respecced Traluun to become Beast Mastery, and begun leveling him again. After doing my normal daily stuff on my 70s, Traluun has gained 3 levels, much improvements in armor, and I am beginning to lean how to play as a Beast Master hunter. While Venara, the Humar like cat he runs with, is a nice pet and does good at what she should, she doesn't currently do what I would have hoped she would in dps and aggro control. I am enjoying learning the different aspects of the Beast Master tree, but I don't think I will never duplicate a BRK video.

Shard, Shard, Shard, Shard, Void. Win! - As a Jewelcrafter(Telaan) who Mines as well as Medros, most of the results of which get prospected to get gems. Due to this, I have found I get a lot of Adamantite Powder, as well as a lot of Khorium Ore and Eternium Ore, which cannot be prospected. At the point I checked last night, I had nearly 600 powder, 300 Khorium Ore, and 500 Eternium Ore. I decided to do something with all this ore and powder, since it will be all useless in a few months.

Being a JC on Telaan, and an Enchanter on Traluun, I made up 33 Braided Eternium Chain and mailed them over to Traluun, who will actually be able to make use of the Large Prismatic Shards that the chain's are guaranteed to  Disenchant into. I was really happy, though, to find that I only got 32 shards, as one of my Disenchants gave me a second Void Crystal. I had always wondered how likely the 'rare chance' to get a void crystal on any one item might be, and as I got the crystal on #20, I would say it works out to about 5%. Those brought me to over 40 crystals total, which should help a lot when Traluun hits 50 in a few days.

Spirit of Competition update - As you may have noticed, there are a lot of Olympians in the game these days. With the start of the 2008 summer Olympics Blizzard launched a new PvP event called Spirit of Competition. There are 2 known rewards at this point in the competition. The basis of both of these rewards involves participation in the Battlegrounds. The first one is the Competitor's Tabard, received by having an honorable kill in a battle ground. The second is the Gold Medallion. I blogged about these before, but I wanted to give you an update on this. So far Traluun, Medros, and Arita have the Tabard. Medros and Arita have the Medallion. I am planning to PvP with Telaan tomorrow, and will be trying with Traluun again now that he is 45, though 2 wins failed to get it a level or two ago.

Stayin' alive, stayin' alive! - I want to preface this with the note that I am not looking for sympathy, just giving info and letting you all decide how to make use of this info. About a week ago I lost my job. Today my web hosting came due, as the last referral I got has been used up over the last several months. I would like to let you know about some of the referral codes you can use if you need a site and decide to use my host, Dreamhost. First, MALYGOS will get you a monthly account with no set up fee. Second, TIRION will get you $50 off a 1 year prepaid hosting account. Lastly KRASUS will give you 2 months of free hosting(or $20 off) for any of the plans other than monthly hosting. While I have had email issues before, the support team has always been great about helping solve them quick.

That's about for the rambling topics for today. Let me know if there is anything else you want to see, hear about, or learn about in future. Thanks a lot, and take care. 

You may recall I did a talent overview of the Balance tree when the pre beta talent trees were published after the Worldwide Invitational. Well, now that Beta has arrived, bringing with it both Hunter and Paladin talents, I am here to give you my perspective on the new form of Retribution in the current Beta build. After I give you the highlights from the Ret tree, I will go over a few general changes and improvements to the Paladin class. Here is my prospective talent tree, and my current tree.

Let me first say, I am really excited about staying Ret all the way to 80 and into whatever end game I decide to play in. While both Holy and Protection will be getting some amazing changes, making them more versatile than their base abilities, I honestly believe the Retribution tree is getting the biggest, and best changes. Will it change how people see us? Unlikely, but it will be a start. Now, to the talents:

Heart of the Crusader - Ranks: 3 - In addition to the normal effect, your Judgement spells will also increase the critical strike chance of all attacks made against that target by an additional 1/2/3%. Opinion: As seemingly the only Paladin in the world who uses Seal of the Crusader, I will miss that ability, but I will like the fact this ability might make me that little bit more desirable to raids.

Sanctified Retribution - Ranks: 1 - Damage caused by targets affected by Retribution Aura is increased by 2%. - Opinion: This stacked with the removal of Sanctity Aura will make the Retribution Aura an actually desired aura for (now) the entire Raid. I know I will be changing my macro from Sanctity(yes, another 'rarely used' one that I use all the time) to Retribution.

Sheath of Light - Ranks: 3 - Increases your spell power by an amount equal to 10/20/30% of your attack power and your critical healing spells heal the target for 20/40/60% of the healed amount over 12 seconds. - Opinion: With Blizzard's change from the Burning Crusade widespread stat list, to the more general ones coming in Wrath, this is both expected and welcome. As a Paladin who, while Blizzard has talked about switching Ret itemization to more warrior based, knows that Alliance Paladins still use a lot of spells and go through a lot of mana, I look forward to this talent which will still help me out.

Sanctified Seals - Ranks: 3 - Increases your chance to critically hit with all spells and attacks by 1/2/3% and reduces the chance your Seals will be dispelled by 33/66/100% - Opinion: Another +crit talent is always nice, and while I do not think that in PvE I was in great risk of having my seals dispelled, I will take that as an added buff in case I am ever PvPing.

Sanctified Wrath - Ranks: 2 - Increases the critical strike chance of Hammer of Wrath by 25/50%, reduces the cooldown of Avenging Wrath by 30/60 secs and while affected by Avenging Wrath 25/50% of all damage caused bypasses damage reduction effects. - Opinion: So at top rank Hammer of Wrath does about 700, which is not much even on crit, especially when you can usually only cast it once per mob, but I'll take it. The bigger thing for me is the Avenging Wrath buffs. 1 minute chopped off that spell, plus it's already dropped forebearance, and adding the damage bypass... that will make Avenging Wrath a must use spell in any fight.

Swift Retribution - Ranks: 3 - Your Retribution Aura also increases casting, ranged and melee attack speeds by 1/2/3% - Opinion: Yet another buff to Retribution Aura. Anyone noticing a theme here?

The Art of War - Ranks: 3 - Your damaging Crusader Strikes have a 5/10/15% chance to cause your next Judgement spell to cause double damage. - Opinion: Watching for the buff will be important, because this would be one of those 'OMG, go for broke' level of buffs.

Righteous Vengeance - Ranks: 5 - Increases critical damage bonus of all attacks by 3/6/9/12/15%. - Opinion: Retribution Paladins = God Mode, crit style

Divine Storm - Ranks: 1 - An instant weapon attack that causes Holy damage to up to 4 enemies within 8 yards. The Divine Storm heals up to 3 party or raid members totalling 20% of the damage caused. - Opinion: Great for solo, decent for party. I imagine the animation will be bloody fantastic!

General Abilities:

-The change from Blessings to Hands on some of the 'off blessings' of current game is great, and I look forward to seeing what they come up with.
-Aura's being raid wide will be awesome, and will allow for a more overall coverage of aura's in a multi Paladin group
-Lay on Hands will be nice to see the changes, but I want to know how much mana it will now drain and how much health it will heal.
-Repentance will be nice, though I can honestly say I do not recall ever using it before. I will have to check it out, cause I clearly forgot this ability previously.
-Righteous Fury now doing 90% more threat on holy damage will be awesome for those non Prot who need to off tank in a run.
-Enlightened Judgements is a talent I wish was in Ret, as the improved distance was, I am told, in Ret pre TBC.
-DI and and LoH having lowered cooldowns of 20 minutes will be awesome.
-Holy Wrath being instant cast and does a stun? Finally!


Overall I am really enjoying the look of the Retribution tree in the Wrath Beta, and really enjoying the overall Paladin based improvements. I have concerns about mana pools, because Ret Paladins still need to cast a lot of spells and I am not seeing a lot so far to change that. Still, this is leaps and bounds better than currently in the game, though, of course, anything said here can and very well may change between now and Launch Day of Wrath of the Lich King. 

I have mentioned a few times that I have now four level 70 characters. There is one thing I have noticed in the leveling from 58-60 all the way up to 70. Medros and Arita almost leveled together. Due to the simultaneous leveling, it was really difficult to learn much toon to toon, and therefore the streamlining to improve leveling was non existent. The only improvements where in the 'where's this mob' type of improvements.

With Ameland, my now 70 Hunter, I learned a lot. I knew about the BoE items that could be used to gain rep quickly, and therefore rep was very easy to gain. Unidentified Plant Parts, Pair of Ivory Tusks, Oshu'Gun Crystal Fragment, and more were farmed up by my two 70s for easy gaining of rep. With those controllable rep grinds out of the way, I began to level my Hunter to 70 and did so relatively quickly. Unfortunately I pretty much seem to have stopped there, having done relatively little with my hunter other than a few rep dailies.

Not that I have worked my second Paladin up to level 70, I have applied all of the lessons I learned from the first 3 70s to this one. I was gathering and buying Plant Parts as soon as I hit Outlands. I arranged runs through Ramparts, Blood Furnace, and Underbog early in those zones. I had enough Tusks to get to friendly with the Consortium and even gift a few to an up and coming guild mate. I fully quested in Zangar in order to maximize the gain from the Nagrand quests, and whenever I fly through Nagrand I help out with the Ring of Bloods.

I have waited to do any warbead turn in's until I was done with all of the Netherstorm quests in Netherstorm. I maximized the leveling I did in each zone to ensure I made a full 2 levels per zone including any instances I did. I will point out that even with the massive rep from the Midsummer Fire Festival, I was on the last quests out of Evergrove before I dinged 70. I did all of my SSO dailies on every day I could, and when time allowed I added to my balance by doing the quests in Netherstorm.

Before I was even done in Netherstorm, though after I hit exalted with SSO, I got enough gold saved up for an epic bird and training, which made the last part of the zone go much, much faster. At roughly 500g per landmass in Netherstorm, it was not difficult at all to work my way toward 5000 without even touching the quests in Shadowmoon.

After 4 times running this progression,  I am finally confident that I have maximized the time and resources it takes to hit 70 in the most efficient manner. This, as I am sure some of you realize, is a very important thing looking ahead. With the maximized leveling I have perfected, and the level 55 starting point of the Death Knight, I am fairly sure I can hit 70 on my Death Knight within a few days of the expansion's release. The only big question that remains, though, is whether I will have a chance to master the 70-80 progression.

How are you preparing your skills and resources to maximize the events that follow the launch of Wrath of the Lich King? 

I am extremely happy to announce that I now have a 4th 70, Telaan the Draenei. The plan with Telaan was to spend two levels in each Outlands zone with a mixture of instances, questing, and some rep grinding. There were a few times when I left a zone with an unfinished quest, but never without my 2 levels dinged. I saw Ramparts, Blood Furnace, Underbog and Slave Pens. As I planned, I spent time in Hellfire, Zangar, Terrokar, Nagrand, and finally dinged in Blade's Edge Mountain.

As I mentioned a few hours ago, a great deal of level 68 was spent on the holiday fires, so I cannot take full credit for my plan working completely, but I am fairly confident I would have still dinged in Blade's Edge Mountain, though it may have been a last remnant of the quests, not in the middle of them like I did. I wanted to thank the many guild mates who helped me out along the way to this level. I can't name you all, but my thanks go out to you none the less. I began my 4 days off hoping to hit 70 by the end of them, and my guildies made it possible to hit it halfway through. Now, to the Isle!

I set forth a goal for myself. My Draenei Paladin Telaan was at about 67.3 at the start of my 4 days off. For those who don't know, I work long shifts(10-12 hours) and therefore have a 4 on, 4 off rotation. Well, on the first day of my 4, I dinged 68. No big, just finished up quests in Nagrand including a bunch of painfully hard to solo group quests and even helped some finish quests I had already completed. I guess that's why they call them group quests.

As I was riding back to Telaar from around the space ship that Durn pats around, I decided to stop and take care of the fire stuff just outside. I had already dinged, which brought me in line with my 2 levels a zone plan, so I wasn't concerned with spoiling it. 6,000 experience later, I was running over to WoW Insider to see if they had a list of how many of these xp rich fires there were to hit up for a good solid chunk of XP.

I ran over to the one at Garadar, and hit up for a grintastic 12.000 experience. It was hovering around 7 or 8 PM, and I decided to see how many I could hit. By the time I logged off at 5 AM, I had hit all of the old world fires, including the well camped ones in the major horder cities to get the Crown of the Fire Festival(45,000 xp from those turned in) and I dragged myself tiredly to bed.

I cleaned up the ones in Outlands except the 2 I am saving for when I ding(Netherstorm and Shadowmoon) and now sit a mere 2 bubbles(or 80,000 xp) from leveling and I have yet to turn in any quests in Blade's Edge Mountains. A couple in my guild dinged twice of the fires bringing their warlocks both up to 58, without doing any other quests for their levels. They got about 1 and a half levels from the Fire Festival. Have you used the new format of the Fire Festival to push a lower level character significantly higher in their leveling? Do you like when they bring such experience heavy quests intot he game? Let me know in the comments!

I was sitting in game tonight after my Jewelcrafting Paladin Telaan had dinged 67, and got hit with about 5 orders in an hour for gems. Most were cuts, but 2 of the orders were for fully cut gems. The first, for 1 Solid Star of Elune, 1 Sovereign Nightseye, and 2 Thick Dawnstone, netted me a cool 150 gold, which added to the gold from questing and the Ring of blood quest line(Honed Voidaxe was my pick by the way) put me well over 300 gold. Then, just as I was about to log for the night, I got a hit from my chatter addon, which I have searching all channels for cut, JC, Design, and a few other terms.

"LF JC to cut a few gems" was the request, and I immediately did my click to whisper and said 'what do you need'. 5 gems of my own cut later, including 2 Teardrop Living Ruby and 3 Royal Nightseye for a returning player and I was up another 225 gold. I ended up sending over 500 gold to my mule for the night. My mentioning my profits for the night in guild chat, though, triggered a discussion with a fellow Jewelcrafting guild mate.

My guildmate expressed a fair bit of unhappiness at the impending cost of the Shattered Sun Offensive jewelcrafting designs. Still curious about the overall price for all the designs, since I plan to wait until I hit exalted on Telaan to buy all of them, I hopped to Medros, who is already exalted. I ran over to the new NPC in Shattrath City by the Isle portal, and priced out all his goods. 1,588g80s for all that he has. All the epics and all the spell haste gem cuts from Shaani on the Isle or Ontuvo in Shattrath.

I then checked for the trinkets I know they have, because I for one would only buy one design, since they are Bind on Pickup(or creation). Nothing. So I went through the portal and found the quartermaster, Eldara Dawnrunner, who had even more designs, including 5 trinkets designs. Taking only the Design: Figurine - Khorium Boar, but also the gem cuts she had available, added a little over 200 gold to my total. In the end, the total of all of those designs from the two vendors I looked at was 1,802 gold and 40 silver.

To many that looks like a lot of gold. At the time I did that math, though, I had that much spread between all of my alts. Still, most people wouldn't have that much kicking around, and what I do have, mostly, will be going to Telaan's bird at 70, so I decided to see what the value of getting to exalted is. Forgoing any Magister's Terrace runs, one can earn 3150 rep according to WoW Wiki(though I found out by deduction that it does not include the quests in Hellfire, 500 rep combined) so a total of 3650 rep daily.

Needing 42000 reputation to get from Neutral to Exalted, it would take roughly 12 days with all quests open to you in order to get to the goal. Each day, if you did all the quests, not including residual coins and selling off any rewards possible, you would earn roughly 152 gold per day for those 12 days. At that rate of earning gold, you would have, if you saved up and did not include any other income from crafting or other dailies, 1824 gold. This would, though preclude getting the 'of the Shattered Sun' title that is available at exalted, but I figure with the current rate for a epic cut being in the neighborhood of 25-50gold on my realm, and continued dailies being done, it would not be long at all before the title would be easily affordable,

The point of this post is that if you put your mind and heart to a goal, you can do it in time, and in this case in just enough time. Oh, and sorry for the total overdose of math in this one, as I know some readers(hey Jen) really dislike the number crunching in blog posts. Lastly, as to what happened to the 500 gold I made on Telaan today? That went to buying Design: Tenacious Earthstorm Diamond, leaving only 2 drop cuts left for my JC to aquire. 

(Or, Ding 60!)

So just about an hour ago now, my Draenei Paladin, while killing a demonic boar in the wastelands of Hellfire Penninsula, dinged level 60, and began his trip around the old world. First, to Ironforge, where 80 gold or more was spent on training. Then, a friendly mage in Stormwind gave me a lift to Darnassus, where my exalted reputation gave me a really good deal on training and a Swift Mistsaber. It feels good to have hit 60 for the 4th time, and I look forward to hitting level 70 even more. Yes, I intend to have 2 level 70 Retribution Paladins. What, is that a problem?

Anyways, in my travels on my Paladin, from city to city, I hit my Jewelcrafting macro every 10 minutes or so, just letting people know that I was around. One person messaged me to ask how much a Jagged Talasite would cost him. I asked if he had the base gem, and he did not. Not being near the AH, I quoted the average price from the WoWHead entry there of 15g. I figured that in order to make a sale I could swallow any loss on the cash. Well, the guy berates me for trying to rip him off.

It seems the same cut on the Auction House goes for 8 gold. 8 GOLD!?!?! This is a rare gem cut in a great DPS format. And it sells for 8 gold. It seems, for some reason, that Talasite in general sell far below the average price for an epic gem. This makes me a sad cutter, as those Talasites, I feel, are some of the best cuts in the game. Was I wrong to refuse to lower my price to what I feel is an already low price for an epic cut without mats? I already had to set a price for cutting with mats as I was tired of getting 1-2 gold for a cut, or worse, 5g for 3 stacks of ore prospected and 6 rare cuts. What do you think?

So, for the first time since Ameland hit Outlands so many months ago, my fourth character has walked through the portal to Outlands. Telaan, my Draenei Paladin, dinged level 58 today, which means he can now venture through the Dark Portal in the Blasted Lands without the help of a portal, summons, or hearth stone. I must say, this time feels just as epic as the first time I went with Medros. €

I think the reason Ameland and Arita felt almost... blah when they went through was because Medros had gone through himself just a short time before. Now it has been months since I have seen the opening zone from the perspective I am, of a low little squishy who can me stomped really easily. How fun! Now, where is that damned noise coming fr-

So the last 24 hours or so had been a big one, with many dings across two of my characters. No, Medros nor Arita gained multiple levels, but Telaan, my Draenei Paladin, as well as Sardrissa's Draenei Paladin Epidraa, did both gain several levels. The 'day' began on Medros and Sardrissa, questing and killing, and as previous she dinged 65 before Medros, and then we decided to just drop group and have her help me with kills, allowing me more XP and allowing me to play a little bit of catch up, so we can ding closer in future. We decided since we where in Shattrath, and I had gotten bored with killing Basilisks so Arita can get friendly with Scryers, that we would go kill the bird people, which everyone tells me is a reference to 'Dark Crystal'. On the 20th or 30th kill, it finally happened.

Live from Outlands, it's Level 65!!!!

That's right, only 5 more to go until I hit 70. I hope that in the next few levels that my gold production goes up, as I am currently sitting too far from the 900 gold I will need by the time I ding 70 for Medros' Gryphon. Speaking of, I was pondering the other day. Do I want to get the bird that looks the coolest, or one that is unique? Everyone seems to have the snowy gryphon, but it is by far the coolest looking one. There do seem to be more of the traditional looking ones in the last few days, but still I see more snowy than anything else. Arita will get his riding skill for free, so it will be a total of 1,007g for each of my characters to get a normal speed gryphon.

That's 900 for training and bird for Medros, and 100 for the bird, and 7 for the stormcrow for Arita. I guess I will see where I stand around 68 on Medros, and by then I should be able to decide if I need to do some major leveling on Arita, to add to the overall balance sheet across the two. Based on the cash Medros is earning from runs and such, I am sure Arita will have no problem getting a Gryphon by 70. I guess I am still a fair ways off from that, so no need to decide just yet.

After a few hours of restful sleep, I decided upon waking that it was time to spend a little quality questing on my Paladin, who has at full rested XP. Drissa and I logged our paladins, and began to finish off quests we already had completed, and see what else was out there. We both dinged 12 shortly there after, getting us access to the Redemption quest, and as we had to go back to Blood Watch hold anyway, we headed out by bird, and quickly did the quest, though we didn't head back to Exodar for a bit. I died a couple times(making me wish we had finished the Redemption quest) but eventually got a few more quests, and a lot more killing done, and dinged 13 after only a few hours.

This opened us up to more quests, but we decided to head back to the capital to turn our quest in, get our lovely res, and when we hit Blood Watch, we decided to call it for the day, as we had run out of rested. This was not, though, before we saw another cool NPC line, just outside of the inn in Blood Watch. Not bad, though, and with this pace I think we can easily hit 40 in a couple months on those characters. It is awesome to quest with someone who I work so well with, and have such a great relationship with. Wouldn't give her up for any amount of gold, gems, or gear.

Anyways, that was my day. It was pretty full, but now I am not feeling so hot. I guess it might have something to do with my missing Gall Bladder. Gonna go rest, will let you know when I next do something interesting or cool in game.