Welcome to the Windy Weather Website.
These are musings from my vantage point on the Oregon South Coast.
A long-time software engineer and general geek, I continue my exploration with Photography, 3D Graphics, Linux and other nonsense. Come along for the ride.
Ok – So what now?
So just how do you level these days?
I’m back to Wow after playing back in 2011 – 2013, so a lot of things have changed. As I mentioned in my last Wow post about Economics, the leveling experience is different in many ways. When I restarted in the May 2017, I had some characters up to 85 or so, both Horde and Alliance, and some saved gold. My goal was to build a realm of about a dozen Alliance toons starting with a DK that was already 85, a Hunter in low 80’s and a few other lower level toons. I’m an Altaholic so I try to play all the classes and many of the races.
Here are some tips that I’ve learned about how best to level.
(1) Take advantage of Heirlooms. With a 10% Exp boost for each piece and the power they give, they are worth the gold, even if you need to use a Wow Token to get and upgrade them. I splurged and have both Agility and Intellect Mail as well as Plate and Cloth sets. 32 Total, all upgraded to Level 100. Sure I could get 3 more for the side car mount that comes with the Achievement at 35, but I don’t have any more toons lower than level 20, so everybody already rides. Honored rep with your guild allows you to buy helms and legs, so that can be four pieces of armor. At 10% XP boost per piece that’s 40% XP boost per kill or quest – I think. At least I’m leveling a lot faster than otherwise. I’m leaving areas about half way through as I quest. The heirloom weapons are very powerful too. So that’s a minimum of five heirlooms per spec type. But there’s a lot of overlap. Druids and Shaman can both use the Mace with Intellect or Agility for example.
GW2 Trading Post Graph
After playing World of Warcraft back in 2011-2013, then Tera and Guild Wars 2, I’m back playing Wow again. I’ve been watching two things:
There have been a few changes in Wow since I played it, or at least there appear to be. And this note looks at those changes in the economics by comparing Wow with the other two games I’ve been playing.
The first thing I’ve noticed is that changes in a game that are made to allow folks to level up faster greatly affect the economy, or can. And in some cases they can basically wreck the economy for some groups of players.
As some toons reached about 70, I created Cloth and Mail armor with crafting. There are several problems to be solved:
It turns out that the Wow crafting panel has a search feature, and if you choose “unlearned” then you can search for recipes that you don’t know.
Let’s compare the “Cosmetic Look” features of Guild Wars 2 and World of Warcraft, as well as the banking, battle and party loot features and see what that can tell us about game philosophy.
Starting with Wow, let’s look at Transmogrification.
I admit, I need a guide to level.
Ok, I admit it. I need a guide to level up. I used to use Xellerated guides – which cost actual money. But after all these years, they are gone or changed their name. And there are lots of guides in the Curse catalog. I did a little looking and chose this one: Wow Pro Guide. This one looks like it has lots of other features – profession leveling, achievements, etc. – that I’ll look into, but I got going right away with the leveling guide and with TomTom which it requires, it works very nicely.
It’s been a while since I’ve played anything but the “Starter” which I check out every few months. But I’ve decided to Re-Up my subscription and get back into it. After all, with no upgrade I can go as far as Warlords now. My highest toon is 87, so there’s a long way to climb to hit the top of Warlords.
Things have changed, mostly for the better.
I’ve been playing a Berzerker recently after playing the new Valkyrie. This is a Zerker that’s been sitting for a year or more at about level 40, and I’ve played it recently for about 10 levels, so the equipment it currently has is based on the recent changes that reward tokens for Vanguard Requests.
My issue is that after all this time, the older classes, like the Berzerker, have not been updated to the new standard of DPS shown by the other classes.
Starting with Reaper of course, the recent classes have all been overpowered, but Blue Hole studios has never gone back to update the previous classes to the same DPS standard that these new classes enjoy.
Having recently played 3 Valkyries – on three servers – up to 65, as well as all the previous overpowered classes, I’m very familiar with the DPS done by the newer classes, and the recent upgrades to the classes that the Battle Solutions and Token gear provides as one levels a character. As I play this Berzerker it is readily apparent that this class is lagging both in DPS done and in survivability because of vulnerability during skill wind up times. In spite of the fact that the Berzerker is wearing plate armor, compared with the Valkyrie Leather armor, the Valkyrie is more survivable – takes less damage – because it’s attacks occur much more quickly and often cause stuns.
When you reach 65 as a Valkyrie, you can open your Level 65 Reward Box. I’m not clear if this is always going to be given to levelers, or whether it’s a reward from the “Event” for the introduction of the class. But it’s got some sweet gear in it. Level 65 toons are given class specific Idoneal Gear, which is Tier 4. This reward box contains “Slaughter” gear Tier 9 gear including a Masterwork +12 weapon, and a full set of Armor. Well, you don’t get the armor, but you get enough Undercede currency items – 225 – to buy the full set of armor and accessories.
I’ve got a couple of my Valkyries to level 65. With all the buffs and XP Boosts during the event, it’s not that hard. The trick is to run a couple of dungeons though. I ran the Armory twice on one character and the Armory and the Catacombs each on the second character. With both of them I reached 65 before going inside the fortress for the final battle with Dakuryon. Things were a lot easier at the higher level, even though you don’t get a better weapon and I didn’t bother going back for the better armor.
Of course there is the new Valkyrie class. She’s a babe with attitude, but that’s no different from all the recent class additions. All female, all gender / culture locked and all over-powered. I’ve been away from Tera for a while doing other things. Guild Wars 2, Wow Private Servers, and Guild Wars 1. I left Tera back a while ago when they nerfed Guilds. Took away the guild bank unless you had lots of dedicated players, so the guild bank was locked away from family or multiple account players. But I’ve come back to try Valkyrie and found a few things had changed.
They seem like minor changes and they simplify the game, but some of these changes appear to have had unintended, or at least disappointing consequences.
Update: Pics of Level 53 Armor
