Windy Weather

I’m sick of playing it and sick of hearing about it. Here’s an example of a 97 Mage in the area near Kahdgar’s hangout in Talador. I’ve played through this area with every class, and taken out No’losh, the Elite swamp walker, every time on Live. But in PTR, he’s a 99 – level scaled up above my 97 mage and he can’t be solo’d even with the Mage helper Serena. And another thing. Notice the fight with the Shambler and Bloodpetals.

They almost got me again since they gang up on you outside the cave. But notice the Bloodpetals give the same XP as the Shamblers? Huh? Those little guys were weaker in Live. Supposed to be since there is a gang of them. But not in PTR and likely not in 7.3.5 either. The level scaling has so many issues you would not believe.

Continue reading “Level Scaling – Sick of It”

I just found a neat feature. /played which is a chat command that displays the time played for the current character since creation and in the current level.

Update: See below.

Since I reupped in May, I’ve been leveling some toons pretty efficiently. I typically used dungeons to level 60, then quests through Outland, Northrend, Vashj’ir and Pandaria. Some dungeons were played after level 60, but primarily quests were used to level. At this point, they continued with Quests and Treasure Hunting through Draenor. Treasure hunting gives about 1.5 times the XP of a quest in the area, so using a Treasure Hunting AddOn can be a very efficient way to level, especially if you can fly through Draenor.

The goal is to get to 101 before going to Legion. All the characters have 4 Heirloom armor pieces, an Heirloom weapon and a necklace. At level 101, there is a jump in Heirloom item level, which will help a lot when starting Legion. Here are the play times for some of these characters leveled this way to about 100:

Before taking these characters to Draenor, I took a Demon Hunter through the DH starting area, and then directly to Draenor to most efficiently get Draenor Pathfinder. So all other characters could fly in Draenor. As these characters reached Level Cap of Outland, and Northrend they moved on to the next area. Before moving to Draenor, some of the classes were taken to 91 to boost the Heirloom Item Level, but in general this is not that necessary. The Pandaria and Draenor starting areas are quite friendly and reasonable even with green level gear.

Continue reading “Play Times to Level”

I have completed the quest chain to obtain the Grand flying faction mounts from Pandaria. Whew. It took a month or so to get Exalted with the Dominance Offensive faction and then a few hours to grind through the quests to finally Ring the Bell and get the mount. Of course you can get the Armored version of the mount for Gold when you reach Exalted, but I prefer the non-armored versions of the mounts. For the non-Armored version, you need to complete the quest chain, the last few of which require Exalted with your faction Rep in Pandaria. The Guides know all.

Continue reading “Grand Faction Mounts”