Tips& Tricks - Tol Barad Gold

Nearly everyone has given Tol Barad a try but for those that haven't here is a quick rundown.

The first part of the zone doesnt require any PvP and is made up of several dailies.  Its a smallish zone with no flying.  Doable in new level 85 gear and incredibly easy with the gear inflation we have now.

Portals to the zone are right next to the major portal hub in Stormwind and Ogrimar making it easy to pop in and out of.  In fact if you buy the tabard you can use it as a second Hearthstone going to Tol Barad and then zoning through the portal to your capital city.

Its through that zone you reach the second zone.  Its locked off during PvP matches but you can wander in regardless of who is in charge to look around between matches. 

PvP P

I laugh every time I say that stat name.  Seriously its like the Wii did anyone ever think about it?
*Ahem* Anyway..
For those of you that dont know Ghostcrawler (lead systems designer in WoW) said their removing resilience!  Then their replacing it with two that's that kinda do the same thing but dont.  This has lead to lots of questions and thoughts and since Im on the interwebs I feel the need to add my voice to the mob.

Ah Southpark they skewer some things

Altaholic Speed Leveling Guide

Greetings and Salutations!

With a new year comes new characters.  To help with that Ive finished the first portion of my  leveling guide.  Ill be testing the 70-80 portion of the guide and get it up in the next week.

The guide can be found in the page index on the left hand side of my blog.  Let me know if you have any questions or additions to it.

Honor Points and Math Failure

So Im doign a little PvP on my shinny new druid.  The first match I join the horde are losing 2 to 0 and I manage to help them turn it around and win (Nether side had an effective healer).  Im excited when I see the honor listed at the end of the match - 51!  Thats almost enough for the 3 items I want to buy (Trinket, ring, necklace) at 20 honor each.  I Que up and run a second match and it was an awful horrid loss but we did get 1 flag in and kill a bunch so 26 honor is listed.

Speed Leveling 2

I have some additional thoughts and some clarifications so lets revisit that topic a bit.

3 Additional)  But I wont have the flightpath for the zone?!
This is true.  They don't want you facing a zone when its 'too hard' or 'challenging' so even though you can get the quests you aren't automatically given the flightpath to the area.  You have to weigh the time it will take to walk/ride/fly there then against the gain in better exp.  This really is important at lower levels more than after 20+ since your mount makes moving quite easy.

If spending a few minutes traveling Azeroth is too much work for a big jump in exp/treasure then just be lazy and wait for them to hand you the keys to the door.

Speed Leveling

I've had several people ask me about how to level an Character fast and efficiently.  So here are a few tips.

1)  Don't have one character.

Rested exp effectively doubles your leveling speed.  Its gathered faster in an inn or city (when your level is replaced by 'zzz' by your character portrait).  So having an alt to sell things on the suction house means your main character will gain just that much more bonus exp.

Little things can mean a lot or Quick Honor Tip Pt 3

As I covered in my 'good idea but' post they were letting you just convert points and buy PvP weapons.  I saw a shift in the casual guilds to forcing them as 'required'.

Bliz answered this by making it a requirement that you do PvP  Baiscly you have to earn a number of points in this season before the weapons unlock.  These points are ONLY earned by 'direct PvP actions'*.

*= Thank you GM Suzutoyon for that very easy to understand answer.

Since I had alread bent his ear to ask about the Justice Point to Honor Point swap I bent it some more and ask about the Grizzly hills quests I covered in Quick Honor Tip and Quick Honor Tip 2.  The answer?  "Yes, though they are a much smaller source of Honor, honor earned there does count."

Quick Honor Tip, part 2

For the alliance Smoke Em Out, Keep them at Bay!, Down With Captain Zorna!, and Blackriver Skirmish are all 50 honor quests.

So why should you bother?  It gives you access to honor point gear for low investment of time.

Quick Honor Tip

They fixed the PvP quests in Grizzly hills awarding honor points.

Blackriver Skirmish, Crush Captain Brightwater, Smoke 'Em Out, and Keep them at Bay  gave 50 honor.
Seeking Solvent Awarded 2(?!?!) honor and Riding the Red Rocket awards 4.  Pretty pathetic numbers.

These are the Horde quests I have yet to check the alliance ones.

Balance?

Ghostcrawler posted a very strange thing (full post here).

"At the risk of catching flak for this statement, I feel that the game is as balanced as it’s ever been. When you look back at the vanilla or Burning Crusade days there were many specs that were just jokes"

Balanced?

Of PvP and leveling

PvP gear is something both well established characters and people new to a realm can take advantage of.

But first heres the basics of how PvP works.

Your level defines what bracket you are in and what map(s) is available for you to fight on.  It starts at 10-14 and continues in 5's (15-19, 20-24, etc).  Fighting and killing someone gives you a few points and winning the match more.  If your contributing to a fight (like healing someone) you share kill credit and you both get the points with someone else.

The Warsong (horde) and the Silverwing (Alliance) are your starting factions.  Both have handy items you may want to snag when you can.

It sounds like a good idea Pt 2

Its been pointed out that Zul'Amon and Zul'Grub are the new barrier to raiding.  The argument goes you have to get epics there before raiding no one will actually gear up in normal heroics for raids any more.  So lets compare Vicious Gladiator's Left Ripper and Arlokk's Claws (an offhand drop in Zul'Grub).

It sounds like a good idea...again...

Recently World of Warcraft made a rather simple change that sounded great on paper.  Like reforging I dont think they spent much time on working out what will happen.  So here we are relearning the lessons of the Burning Crusade expansion all over again.

The patch notes are here but this is the relevant bit.

Conquest Points are now purchasable from the Valor Quartermasters at 250 Conquest Points per 250 Valor Points.

Honor Points are now purchasable from the Justice Trade Goods vendors at 250 Honor Points per 375 Justice Points.

Justice Points are now purchasable from the Honor Trade Goods vendors at 250 Justice Points per 375 Honor Points.

Those who played during Burning Crusade will remember what happened when they added gladiatorial armor and weapons that was above the general content level.  Players were forced into PvP to get gear, especially weapons, to enter raids and heroic runs.