Uldum – The new desert zone located in the southern coast of Kalimdor. It is designed for players between 83-84 and is probably where you’re going after deepholm. It is probably my 3rd favorite (out of 3 so far) zone from Cataclsym. Before I get into this one, check out my thoughts on Hyjal and Deepholm. There will be a bit of spoilers regarding quests and story of the zone, so continue after the cut to see the rest.
Category: Daily
The daily 15 minutes.
Daily Thoughts: Deepholm Impressions and Screen Shots
Awesomeness. That’s my “if you had to describe deepholm in one word” word. This zone, like Hyjal, has a very fluid quest process. Blizzard has really stepped up their game with cataclysm. Now the questing has more of the feel of a traditional RPG, where your actions and quest results have a very real effect on the world around you. They again made a lot of use of the phasing mechanics in order to show the progression of the zone and the NPCs involved as you do things which help save the world. The zone is gorgeous and has now become my favorite cataclysm zone. Of course, I’ve only played Hyjal and Deepholm so far.
Daily Thoughts: Hyjal
I must say: Hyjal was a blast. Counting all the horrible groups of people killing and collecting everything for the quests, completing the zone took me between 4-5 hours and got me to level 82. I really enjoy how the zone played out, with few exceptions I’ll get back to later. For the most part, the quests lead you in a circular direction around the zone with very few quests sending you very far. The zone makes heavy use of little mini-instances. You take portals to underground areas and complete small quest chains inside, then return to the main zone to continue. Everything looks great, though (unsurprisingly) they reused a lot of old models for the mobs. I only have one major complaint with the flow and feel of the zone as a whole. Occasionally, there was no quests to do. Sometimes it seemed to not give you any directional quests to the next place and you sort of have to fly around for a little while to find a quest giver.
There aren’t really any difficult quests to complete. This could be due to it being the “entry-level” cataclysm zone or because my Paladin was sporting pretty nice ICC25 quality gear. After doing what I believe was all the quests in the zone, I had only two upgrades to my current gear, though some pieces were close. As a result my person damage dropped a little. As you level the ratings required to gain a % of haste/crit/hit/expertise all become much more substantial. With only 2 upgrades, my haste and crit are both 50% or so lower after 2 levels gained and both hit and expertise, which used to be capped, are now well under cap. Fortunately, I feel that Deepholm holds more upgrades. Shortly after leaving Hyjal I did the Stonecore instance and got Sword of the Bottomless Pit, a substantial upgrade over even my Shadow’s Edge. The damage per second of the weapon is 33% higher. I digress, back to Hyjal.
Another thing I noticed, though honestly not until I was writing this, there wasn’t any group quests in Hyjal. On several occasions I ended up grouped with people so we could share the kill of a quest mob, but it was out of convenience of not waiting for 4 other people to kill it first, not from difficulty of the mob. I am hoping for more difficult future zones and quests. Alas, I must wrap this up, my 35 minute wait to log on is about over and I want to get back to questing.
More from the Cataclysm soon, Deepholm next!
Hyjal leveling guide – I admittedly didn’t use this, but I wanted to provide a resource for those looking for one.
Daily Thoughts: Fear the Reaper
Yes, fear the reaper. My rogue hit 78 last night and although he isn’t the one-shotting-everything-that-moves powerhouse that he was through most of the leveling process, he is still a stealthy ninja-like force to be reckoned with. I can top the meters in instances in my combat spec, but what I really want to focus on today is the fun of the subtlety spec and the new PVP brackets.
PVP as a Subtlety rogue is fun. Sub is the spec that has always played the way I feel a rogue should. Sub emphasises effectiveness and deadliness from the shadows. We get the +30% to stealth movement speed in sub, which is absolutely essential to not being horribly frustrated trying to catch people in a battleground. Of course, we can’t forget to mention sub’s signature ability: Shadow Step. It is buckets of fun to teleport behind an unsuspecting victim and slash him with Ambush, using the increase damage bonus from SS. Further, SS gives a run speed bonus for a few seconds after it’s used, making it a mini sprint that talents to a 20 second cooldown. Not only does this make Shadow Step a great offensive skill, but it can be used when running away from a large pack of enemies by teleporting to the furthest player and then using the run speed to get away. Hopefully this gives you time for Vanish to come off cooldown. Sub rogues just have such a cool toolbox for pvp play, but they suck at PVE right?
Daily Thoughts: Warrior 4.0.3a
Most warriors know by this point that blizzard, using their mighty nerf hammer, struck furious down the haughty warriors and nerfed their precious damage into oblivion, leaving warriors impotent and senile. Or did they? Check the patch that has sent many a search to this blog (and many others I’m sure, but I don’t have their statistic pages) asking, “fury warrior nerf 4.0.3”. Actually, about 50% of all the search terms used to find my blog since 4.0.3a are in regards to the Great Warrior Nerf of 2010. I must admit, I was even a bit concerned seeing a 17% nerf to most of the fury dps toolkit.
So how demolished was my warrior dps after all? Well…It wasn’t. That’s right, you can put your warrior fears to rest. At least fury ones, I hear arms is pretty bad again, but I don’t play that to test it myself. All in all my damage on a test dummy was between 5-10% lower so yes, a nerf, but not world ending. I saw a lot less of my attacks hitting over 10k, which isn’t surprising. On the other hand, I still topped damage in the 3 heroics I did, pretty much every pull. I have to worry about pulling threat from decently geared tanks still, which makes me happy.
So in short, Fury warriors are OK after all. You might not be quite as much of a beast as before, but don’t think you need to go roll a mage now in order to get a raid slot.
Daily Thoughts: More Bad News For Scribes
I just read that Enchanting Vellum, used to put enchantments down on paper so the enchanter can mail/sell them, is now going to be available from the Exchanting Vendor. It appears to have a measly 9s 50c cost. This is officially the nail in the coffin on inscription’s vellum market. This is a little disappointing to me with the change to make all glyphs permanently learned, scribes have precious few things that will create repeat business. Even the level 81+ dust of disappearence (the new vanishing powder for changing glyphs) sells at the inscription vendor for 10g, effectively putting a cap on the potential profit that scribes can get from making it.
Fortunately, we’ll still have our darkmoon cards/decks. Check the following links for each type.
Str > Agi > Heal > Tank > Caster
A more optimistic opinion of inscription heading into cataclysm can be found HERE. That WoW Insider link has a few more of the things inscription will be able to make listed there as well.