Greedy Goblin

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

SFK 20 and myth of the gear 2

To my previous solo posts I got lot of troll comments (deleted as not about the actual instance or soloing in general) "You have BoA gear lol that's why you can bash the instances". The old nonsense, gear makes the player. I proved once that gear upgrades are marginal after you reached the "decent blue / crafted epic" level. Of course socials tend to ignore it to protect their self-esteem: "I could do it if I'd have the gear". No you couldn't, you are unskilled, maybe un-efforted (like me for HC raiding), not ungeared! For low levels, let's see the "uber" BoA on lvl 20, lvl 26 and also a lvl 20 available dungeon blue:
Clearly overpowered right? Of course it's quite convenient that I don't have to farm low level gear, always have a safe fallback. But it's the byproduct of the fact that I raided once, and collected lot of badges. Leveling a character to max and farm instances for badges takes much more time than running the previous instance one more time for gear. The only difference is the trinket, since there are no trinkets on low level. But I seriously doubt that 8 SP will make or break the instance, especially since the blood elf racial, the ability to use bloodthistle gives 10SP.

On low levels the new spells make difference, not the gear. For example on 20 I got new immolate. Immolate was a "better than nothing" spell on 19 and my highest damage spell now. Coupled with the voidwalker's second rank torment (aggro spell), my DPS both increased on its own and no longer capped by threat. Practically my former 27 increased to 45. On the top of that, lvl 20 gives he new rank of health funnel it can be told that my power nearly doubled from 19 to 20:

The new healing spell with the new torment also gave the VoidWalker huge tanking capacity. When I fought Odo the Blindwatcher, a rare elite, Deathsworn Captain joined the fight. Still, I could kill them all, in a 5:30 long fight, keeping most of the bats and the two elites on the Void, healing him and healing myself with bandages:

The other bosses were nothing worth mentioning, my only death came when a trashpack containing a Son of Arugal, a worgen and 2 wolves aggroed together.

Arugal doesn't reset aggro between jumps. But his shadowbolts hit hard and also he is capable to turn you into worgen and the PvP trinket doesn't help. So the highest priority was keeping safely below VW aggro and keep funnel up every time he cast his bolt. Tip: if he targets you, and starts casting the bolt, LoS him immediately. The fight was slow but sure:

Note: I made a"solo table" post, as table of contents for my soloing/duoing adventures.

Note2: I've changed my commenting rules, from now on the posts will turn un-commentable after 3 days. So you can comment this post today, tomorrow and the next day, but not after that. The existing comments remains visible.

27 comments:

Anti said...

off topic....but....

THEY FIXED THE MAILBOX SO IT OPENS EVERYTHING WITHOUT NEEDING TO RELOAD!!!!


woot!

AFK MAILBOX FTW!

ps - i killed the spirit of the AH camper glyph sellers by listing the new glyphs at a max of 20g about an hour after the servers came up. there was one seller before me with 200g glyphs.

Anonymous said...

That's an odd commenting rule, I don't quite see its point, but it's your blog.

Although I agree with your sentiments, I think you were far too absolute on the subject of gear. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it can be summed up as "Gear is unimportant because there are many factors more important than it".

Just because having round wheels affects the speed of a car more than the horsepower of its engine doesn't make its horsepower unimportant.

I agree with you in general, though, it is possible to clear most normal mode content in less than "adequate" gear. That does NOT mean that you gear doesn't help you extremely in that mistakes are forgiven much more if your gear is better, and that the rng can't screw you over if you don't have the right amount of gear.

Flex said...

Yes, I noticed this much more when recently levelling new alts: The new spell abilities represent tremendous buffs at the level you can first learn them.

Unknown said...

To be fair, Robes of Arugal has always been an amazing robe for it's level. Even in vanilla, the leveling instances were not tuned with the assumption that the players would be wearing level-appropriate blues. Soloing/duoing instances flips the odds, but a five-man group with BoA items would be overkill for the leveling content.

John said...

Gear doesn't matter as much as class for soloing instances. Do the same thing with a warrior or rogue and I'll be more impressed.

Ruhtra said...

I think the thing to take from this is that people are always going to try to force their opinions on someone. In this instance they do not want to admit that these dungeons can be solo'd and so they grasp at every little thing to try to force their view through.

On the part of Gevlon, I commend him for finding a new challenge in the game and actually enjoy the posts. I believe that the BoA gear does not matter and that the success he enjoys does not come from the content but the thought that goes into defeating these bosses on his own.

Anonymous said...

@ Ruhtra

If BoA gear didnt matter, don't you think Gevlon would be running these instances in greens or half naked?

Im going to start a blog about bashing the posters on Gevlons website who always agree with him.

They are so annoying.

Miss Medicina said...

Why do people even bother posting anonymously? I don't really get it. Hm.

BoA gear is intended to be roughly equivalent to a blue at your level. It's not supposed to be some OP boost. There are crafted items you can purchase of blue quality for most level ranges, so it's silly to say BoA gear makes you completely OP.

These soloing experiments are really one of the best ways to show individual skill and knowledge of class.

That having been said, I don't really understand why people saying that gear is the key are "socials". Moronic maybe, but not all morons fit under the category of social! You need a new category.

Gevlon said...

@Miss Medicina: they are socials because they worship gear for two social reasons:
* to show off if they have it, it's kind of status symbol for them. You can't show off without being in a social group
* as an excuse for bad performance if they don't have BiS. "Having an excuse" also needs a social group, as you explain your failures with gear to them, there is no point finding excuses on your own.

Zan said...

The reason I like BOA items, really, is because they increase the speed at which I level. It's also convenient to never have to upgrade those two pieces of gear. I find when leveling my toons may wear the same gear for 10-20 levels because I'm too thrifty to pay AH prices.

Each expansion I seem to level 4 new characters to cap plus all previous existing characters. I'm so sick of tearing through the classic contest that the extra 20% bonus is very worth it to get me out of there faster.

You missed a reason for socials worshiping (or at least collecting) gear: Aesthetics.

It doesn't always have to be a status symbol, it can be someone collecting gear because of silly things like "liking the art". A full set of T2 doesn't scream "badass", it screams "no life."

(Collecting neat costumes is an element of RP servers. Sometimes stuff that's set to be sharded will be taken for someone for lolRP purposes "because it looks cool".)

Chelm said...

By Gevlon's logic he himself is a social.

Also isn't it this patch that got rid of spell ranks? My 12 bank whore rogue is stealthing quite a bit faster than 50% today.

Unknown said...

@Chelm:
Stealth had it's ranks removed, you get it at 1, and move at 70% speed. Really, this patch was "We need more rogues!", what with the change to starting weapons (dual wield), the change to stealth, and all the low level bonuses.

@Gevlon:
What are your plans for solo/duoing? Based on that chart you look like you want to solo/duo all of the dungeons you can, is that the goal?

Markco said...

Maybe you should try solo'ing in arenas gevlon? Good challenge and your opponents aren't robots.
Prot Warrior 2700 Arenas

MyName said...

The question I have is at what point do you stop being able to solo some of these instances? I've managed to solo Uldaman on my warrior, though the mobs were all green or grey, but it got really rough in that last room without a healer and I basically had to solo down 2 elites then do a corpse run.

Though I haven't tried it on a toon that can heal (like a pally or shammy), I think you can probably do the same thing only starting at a lower level if you can self heal.

My guess is starting at around Z'F (which is higher level than Uldaman) it gets to be more difficult to solo. But I wouldn't try gnomer without being a few levels over most of the mobs there.

MyName said...

@Marko:

Are you talking about him consistently running arenas 1 v 2? Or 1 v 3? Or maybe "solo" doesn't mean what I think it means...

Unknown said...

@Gevlon

as an excuse for bad performance if they don't have BiS. "Having an excuse" also needs a social group, as you explain your failures with gear to them, there is no point finding excuses on your own.

One disagreement here, especially since you point out in your post that they "ignore it to protect their self-esteem." While a majority of excuses are probably socially directed, it is very probable that many are directed solely inward to preserve self image.

Markco said...

I'm talking about him doing something that actually requires skill: using BOA items, buffs, enchants and the ultimate low level solo'ing class isn't exactly impressive at all (some will argue that hunters are better at solo'ing in general, but locks are better at instance solo'ing by far).

I mean aoe'ing dozens of mobs with a low level frost mage is more entertaining than this and takes just as little 'skill'.

You have no understanding of true skill in this game until you play the highest rated level of arenas or progress in cutting edge raiding. Many players will never even get to experience fighting gladiators, let alone beat them consistently. Try getting gladiator as a prot warrior, it dwarfs blue uldaur ten fold skill wise.

Since pushing buttons and keybinding is so easy, the real skill of this game comes from managing many things at once and making the best choice every single global cooldown. It's all about min/maxing every aspect of your playstyle. Sure you may be doing that to some degree with your twink warlock, but you're up against mobs that were designed to be beaten by retard level skilled players.

Markco said...

Also if you click my link you'll see that I was refering to 1v2 arenas.

Strutt said...

Markco = Winnar!

Again as I said, you are using a twinked out toon, as you admitted, to solo content. not difficult, they are called twinks for a reason. Grats to finding only 1 piece of gear on par with the BoA gear with = item lvl. /clap. Solo this stuff with quest greens?

Ulduar in Blue doesn’t equal skill or mean gear means nothing, it equals people knowing the sequences of the fight, just like watching a movie 20 times... the exact same thing is going to happen each time in the movie/boss fight. And with DBM... its a joke. OH LOOK LIGHTNING NOVA.. BETTER MOVE.

I think you should do some arenas where you don’t know exactly what someone is going to do, it adds an element of surprise and randomness, and... actual skill /gasp


Also if BoA isnt much as an advantage why even wear it?

T said...

Ah, The good old "pvp is the only true challenge" group has reared its ugly head. Just give over already. If pvp is so superior go take 2 high rated 5v5 teams and kill anub Heroic. or better yet, 5 high rated 2v2's. There are different challenges for different people.

couple specific things:

OK Markco which toon is you in the blue uldar run? or lets see your results from that. and give us your results from soloing low level content at a low level if not just piss off about which takes more skill. I wont say that high end pvp and bleeding edge raiding talke less skill, but unless you have the proof that you have done it all, give over and admit that you dont know (having an opinion isn't knowing, its assuming)

one final thing @ the anon guy starting a blog about people who agree with gelvon... try this first don't post as an an Anonymous pos, after you get the guts to do that i welcome reading your blog

Anonymous said...

I don't see how you could call any of the gear (apart from the trinket) 'twink gear' given it isn't really any better. mos of the stuff he is wearing is available to anyone at any time, ever and he is not using it for pvp (which is what a twink is in Wow). I remember leveling up and having similar quality gear all through the leveling game because I was lucky with rolls, or I just did the instances enough times. I was in plenty of groups that wiped when we had FIVE people doing the job, not one. You can't say +1 stamina or +10 spell power make a difference when 5 socials can fail at something one regular character can do.

These soloing instance post are entertaining, i'm looking forward to when you have a go at BRD, Strath and Scholo. That'll be a real test of skill. Also, do you think a warrior would have the same success rate?

Anonymous said...

Maybe you should borrow you wifes hunter and solo SFK. Her gear looks better than yours without the BOA. Heck, she even has 3/5 of the 'of the Fang' set. If 20 was the level cap, she'd be the envy of all the socials.

With regard to the BOA, I like them because they look effing sweet. Particularily the Dreadmist stuff. I think this gear/skill argument is dead. And to all the doubters, post pics of you soloing these instances or just shut the heck up about 'more of a challenge' or '100 times blue ulduar'

Markco said...

I solo'd SM GY on my level 30 warlock. Now can I say that this takes no skill?

Anonymous said...

Simple way to prove your point, go back & solo it in AH greens! Choosing a sample size of 1 and that sample being the overpowered Robes of Arugal weakens your argument quite a bit IMO

Gevlon said...

@Random gear worshipers: most of my blues ARE from the AH and available for anyone.

@Markco: screenshot that 30 SM GY or never happened.

Markco said...

@Gevlon I don't screen shot pathetic achievements and post them on my blog, sorry!

I do however have screen shots of me being the #1 prot warrior in the world for three months if you'd like those.

Strutt said...

@T
I would also like to see you put 5 players from any of the world's top PvE guilds and put them in a high ranked PvP match and watch them crumble, hell put them in a 1800 ranked match and watch them fall.
I love burning down people in their full T9 sets.


Gev, again blues... Use greens as everyone is saying, Blue IS the best gear you can get at that level. and Gev let’s see some more gear that beats the BoA gear, please I’m interested. and take off the BoA gear because there are better blues according to you.