The permanent page is here, you can comment it on this post.
18 comments:
Skeddar
said...
Good one, if you hadn't written it I might have asked for some help sometime (currently level 83). Aside from the gearing problem, I'm missing a collection of good links besides Elitist Jerks. I just started doing random dungeons and was totally unprepared in my first run of Blackrock sth. After that, I was looking for a video guide which just shows me what the hell happend there. Since then (well, just 5 days ago) I improved so much as to give better explanation on dungeons I've not been in, than the dungeon guide. You might want to consider putting something like that on your site. The videos I found have been in German, so it might not be the best place for some of you. If you are interessted I can give you the URL (don't want to advertise).
I think rather than simply give a guide to how to gear up for raids etc. It would be much more intresting to figure out HOW you knew to gear up for raids. It seems similar to one of your older posts saying rich people had this passed on secret "magic" thing, where they know how to get rich and can pass it on to their children. The problem isn't that the people don't know how to gear themselves, the problem is that they can't/don't want to figure out how to gear themselves. For example, it was obvious to me to look up, prior to leveling from 80 to 85, the reputation vendors and what they sell for each reputation, and simply level in the zones that give me reputation towards factions that give me the most gear I need. If this "drive" if you will, can be isolated and taught, we shouldn't even need stuff like gearing guides.
The conquest point amount was changed to a flat amount and anounced today: http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/2269-Arena-and-RBG-Conquest-Change. That would change the part with the 5 wins a week to "enough wins for X".
PvP gear is usually bad as has resilience, so a PvP epic chest is worse than a 346 blue PvE chest.
For my arms spec, I actually found that many PvP epics are better (I think I'm using 6 of them still - its the OS). The PvP epics are ilvl 365 not 359 and 19 ilvls can offset the resilience. Look for your optimal secondary stats (crit, haste, spirit) on PvP epics and compare them to justice blues to find the right epics.
Also, I think that #5 should be before #4 (pvp epics before guild-hc) as those epics can be huge boosts that take very little of your time and are guaranteed (only JP and a little VP is guaranteed from that guild hc). Note - this can change if someone is setting up a chainrun of guild-hcs, as starting today it is possible to chainrun 7 HCs for a total of 980VP.
Queuing alone to a HC is a total waste. People may say that LFD is not that bad. These people are already geared, coming for only 70 valor. They can carry a bunch of M&S, you can't.
You can, if you are good enough and a dps. HCs have been nerfed significantly and get more nerfs in 4.1. An ungeared tank or healer cannot boost morons, because fights will drag until oom. A good dps will do 10k dps on bosses in ilvl 327 or so and can thus basically substitute for 1 completely absent dps (18k is well enough to down any hc boss).
Also, I don't see craftable epics mentioned anywhere. They probably shouldn't be very high in the list, but are a great way to get a couple of awesome gear pieces. Also, valor boots. They sell for as low as 3k on my realm.
For pvp - craftable blues are ridiculously cheap and better than whatever crap is leftover from leveling. These should be crafted/bought as soon as ding.
Trying to help the unprepared seems like a phenomenal waste of time. They are only a small slice of those not raiding who might possibly decide to raid. And any help you give most likely will sink in with only a portion of them, as many will simply not read what you have here, or read it and ignore it. So, based on the pie chart, it seems you might get 10% more raiders than you have now, at the most.
It seems if you want more raiders, just pay people to raid. Word will quickly spread of this, and you can effect the inactive, the no answer, the don't want to, and probably the unprepared as well, as they will be motivated to get prepared.
But this raises the question of why you even want more people to raid. You have your progress now already. Others seem to not want this progress for its own sake, so they don't raid. Status quo seems acceptable.
In my opinion, heroics are a good way of gearing up. You not only get JP (which gives some good 346 blues) but also get experience. I would advice ppl to do that once they can queue up for it.
I would go to www.wowhead.com and check out the epic rep items. Get the tabard for them and you can get rep while doing heroics.
Archeology is probably sub-optimal in terms of time, but it's a fun way of getting some nice items. Those items are also bind-to-account so they're transferable amongst alts.
Actually, when guilds started raiding on first week, people were geared in BiS pre-hc, cause good blues are available from questing and rep for almost all slots. Plus some hc blues with very few greens. Raiding in questing greens was impossible even with high skill.
The good way to save time on preparation is leveling in locations that gives you needed rep for enchants and blues, plus following quest lines up to their end to get blue rewards. Going for this gear is the easiest and most reliable way to get to 5-man hc and eventually raids - no 5-man normal runs, random drop is random.
Also i don't see why you are skipping crafted epics, they are cheap enough already.
the epic pvp set can be far better that 346 hc items. It totally depends on the statweights an the 4pt bonus. The bonus still gives you your major attribute, so it will count pretty high for personal dps /hps / tps&survival. If, for an example you can choose between a crit & haste blue or a expertise & resilience pvp epic if you are still not expertise softcapped (26) you should prefer the pvp item... ...unless you are an unholy dk. If you want to get the details for personal balancing consult a spreadsheet.
Some more Guides (german and english) can be found here http://manaflask.com/. Please keep in mind that most statweights at EJ or other Guides are referred to BiS gear and often above 359 average ilvl, so for finetuning, again, consult a spreadsheed or calculate them at your own.
It's a good guide. The formatting seems a bit messy to me, but I have no complaints as to the actual content. I don't know how much it will help, though. All of the information you need is readily available - I never raided much, but I knew that I could find out what my class needed from EJ (they even have a nice sticky for it), and I could find out what pieces were available by simply checking Wowhead. Looking up reputation rewards, dungeon/heroic drops and even a few of the higher quest rewards it's easy to find out where to get what you need.
This isn't rocket science. It's not even hard. Even if I'd never heard of Elitist Jerks or Wowhead I could simply have googled 'warlock pve stats' or something similar, and I woulb be suprised if EJ or a similar page weren't in the top ten hits. It doesn't even take much time - even if you read fairly slow you'd be hard pressed to spend more than an hour figuring out what stats you needed, a nice spec and what items you'd want to look for.
A heroic can easily take as long or longer than that. Yet it's clear that there's plenty of people who can easily fit time for another heroic into their schedule, but not spend an hour reading, even though the latter makes them far more prepared for raiding than the former. So either they aren't able to get the information, which is a dangerous skill to lack in today's society, or they don't want to get it, which would make them the kind of idiots who'd say something like "it's only a game man, i have a life", which is clearly contradictory and I guess reveals a lot about them if you care to read into it.
In any case, this guide isn't going to help many people. It seems like people who'd have wanted to read it would have done so anyway, so I guess the people you are hitting here are the kind of people who drift aimlessly about doing heroics without any real goal in mind and now decides "well i guess gevlon is a cool guy, and as he is telling me how to prepare for raiding i might as well do that".
I guess I've been rambling for a while now. What I want to say is this - the guide is great, and contains valid and good information. What I doubt is that the people who need it will bother to follow it.
Lots of people mentioned the points change for arena (now requires more than twice as many arena wins for base cap) but Wintergrasp actually gives 5 weekly quests. You can get both defend siege and destroy tower if you hit it on both attack and defend. There is also the between battles quest where you gather 10 of something.
Not sure if Blizzard tightened up the RBG matching or what but last night our pairings were never against teams more than 100 MM points deference from us. Since you gain more than twice the CP per win through RBG, they might be worth farming for CP if enough people in a guild want to run them. Not exactly a tip for your guide but a tip nonetheless.
If you can't make 1k gold per hour you aren't a goblin, hence this guide wouldn't be for you anyway (it's called the GOBLIN way after all).
We had this discussion long ago, when I claimed that buying the epic inscription trinkets is as efficient as farming TB for rep/tokens or heroics for JP. Your response back then was: "I would never farm that much rep (nor would I farm that much gold) for a single item."
Yet, you now suggest just that but exclude the epic gear from AH.
And before you start crunching numbers: 2 minutes per TB quest is a flat out lie. Even in a full group the traveling alone will take more time. And you didn't include the time necessary to find/form the group in the first place.
Don't get me wrong: I think it's a good guide. It just contradicts what you have said in discussions before. And it lacks the "buy epic gear on the ah" entry.
The PvP gloves for several classes also have a nice boost to certain skills on them, depending on the class they can be superior to even 359 PvE epics.
You might want to change the PvP guide; after 4.1 Randoms are officially the fastest way to gear. One win a day for a week will get you at least 1 piece of gear.
I am surprised you haven't mentioned Baradin Hold. 20 mins for a 1/5 chance at an ilvl 359 epic? Surely that is efficient enough to be on the list somewhere.
This might be my personal opinion, but at least for those determined in being a tank, EJs forum was always a lackluster. Tankspot and it's satelites (like Maintankadin or now closed Tankingtips) are so much better as a knowledge hub for this role. Might be worth mentioning, at least Tankspot.
Good post! Will use this when I level my hunter. It's true that people that read this here already have plans for gearing up, but for me, it works well cause then i'll do I feel like doing.
Also, having all information in place saves me alot of time. Cheers!
18 comments:
Good one, if you hadn't written it I might have asked for some help sometime (currently level 83).
Aside from the gearing problem, I'm missing a collection of good links besides Elitist Jerks. I just started doing random dungeons and was totally unprepared in my first run of Blackrock sth.
After that, I was looking for a video guide which just shows me what the hell happend there. Since then (well, just 5 days ago) I improved so much as to give better explanation on dungeons I've not been in, than the dungeon guide.
You might want to consider putting something like that on your site.
The videos I found have been in German, so it might not be the best place for some of you. If you are interessted I can give you the URL (don't want to advertise).
I think rather than simply give a guide to how to gear up for raids etc. It would be much more intresting to figure out HOW you knew to gear up for raids. It seems similar to one of your older posts saying rich people had this passed on secret "magic" thing, where they know how to get rich and can pass it on to their children. The problem isn't that the people don't know how to gear themselves, the problem is that they can't/don't want to figure out how to gear themselves. For example, it was obvious to me to look up, prior to leveling from 80 to 85, the reputation vendors and what they sell for each reputation, and simply level in the zones that give me reputation towards factions that give me the most gear I need. If this "drive" if you will, can be isolated and taught, we shouldn't even need stuff like gearing guides.
The conquest point amount was changed to a flat amount and anounced today: http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/2269-Arena-and-RBG-Conquest-Change.
That would change the part with the 5 wins a week to "enough wins for X".
PvP gear is usually bad as has resilience, so a PvP epic chest is worse than a 346 blue PvE chest.
For my arms spec, I actually found that many PvP epics are better (I think I'm using 6 of them still - its the OS). The PvP epics are ilvl 365 not 359 and 19 ilvls can offset the resilience. Look for your optimal secondary stats (crit, haste, spirit) on PvP epics and compare them to justice blues to find the right epics.
Also, I think that #5 should be before #4 (pvp epics before guild-hc) as those epics can be huge boosts that take very little of your time and are guaranteed (only JP and a little VP is guaranteed from that guild hc).
Note - this can change if someone is setting up a chainrun of guild-hcs, as starting today it is possible to chainrun 7 HCs for a total of 980VP.
Queuing alone to a HC is a total waste. People may say that LFD is not that bad. These people are already geared, coming for only 70 valor. They can carry a bunch of M&S, you can't.
You can, if you are good enough and a dps. HCs have been nerfed significantly and get more nerfs in 4.1. An ungeared tank or healer cannot boost morons, because fights will drag until oom. A good dps will do 10k dps on bosses in ilvl 327 or so and can thus basically substitute for 1 completely absent dps (18k is well enough to down any hc boss).
Also, I don't see craftable epics mentioned anywhere. They probably shouldn't be very high in the list, but are a great way to get a couple of awesome gear pieces. Also, valor boots. They sell for as low as 3k on my realm.
For pvp - craftable blues are ridiculously cheap and better than whatever crap is leftover from leveling. These should be crafted/bought as soon as ding.
Just a little chance from the new patch: winning an Arena match is 135 Conquest Points. So you need more wins
Trying to help the unprepared seems like a phenomenal waste of time. They are only a small slice of those not raiding who might possibly decide to raid. And any help you give most likely will sink in with only a portion of them, as many will simply not read what you have here, or read it and ignore it. So, based on the pie chart, it seems you might get 10% more raiders than you have now, at the most.
It seems if you want more raiders, just pay people to raid. Word will quickly spread of this, and you can effect the inactive, the no answer, the don't want to, and probably the unprepared as well, as they will be motivated to get prepared.
But this raises the question of why you even want more people to raid. You have your progress now already. Others seem to not want this progress for its own sake, so they don't raid. Status quo seems acceptable.
In my opinion, heroics are a good way of gearing up. You not only get JP (which gives some good 346 blues) but also get experience. I would advice ppl to do that once they can queue up for it.
I would go to www.wowhead.com and check out the epic rep items. Get the tabard for them and you can get rep while doing heroics.
Archeology is probably sub-optimal in terms of time, but it's a fun way of getting some nice items. Those items are also bind-to-account so they're transferable amongst alts.
Actually, when guilds started raiding on first week, people were geared in BiS pre-hc, cause good blues are available from questing and rep for almost all slots. Plus some hc blues with very few greens. Raiding in questing greens was impossible even with high skill.
The good way to save time on preparation is leveling in locations that gives you needed rep for enchants and blues, plus following quest lines up to their end to get blue rewards. Going for this gear is the easiest and most reliable way to get to 5-man hc and eventually raids - no 5-man normal runs, random drop is random.
Also i don't see why you are skipping crafted epics, they are cheap enough already.
the epic pvp set can be far better that 346 hc items. It totally depends on the statweights an the 4pt bonus. The bonus still gives you your major attribute, so it will count pretty high for personal dps /hps / tps&survival. If, for an example you can choose between a crit & haste blue or a expertise & resilience pvp epic if you are still not expertise softcapped (26) you should prefer the pvp item... ...unless you are an unholy dk. If you want to get the details for personal balancing consult a spreadsheet.
Some more Guides (german and english) can be found here http://manaflask.com/. Please keep in mind that most statweights at EJ or other Guides are referred to BiS gear and often above 359 average ilvl, so for finetuning, again, consult a spreadsheed or calculate them at your own.
It's a good guide. The formatting seems a bit messy to me, but I have no complaints as to the actual content. I don't know how much it will help, though. All of the information you need is readily available - I never raided much, but I knew that I could find out what my class needed from EJ (they even have a nice sticky for it), and I could find out what pieces were available by simply checking Wowhead. Looking up reputation rewards, dungeon/heroic drops and even a few of the higher quest rewards it's easy to find out where to get what you need.
This isn't rocket science. It's not even hard. Even if I'd never heard of Elitist Jerks or Wowhead I could simply have googled 'warlock pve stats' or something similar, and I woulb be suprised if EJ or a similar page weren't in the top ten hits. It doesn't even take much time - even if you read fairly slow you'd be hard pressed to spend more than an hour figuring out what stats you needed, a nice spec and what items you'd want to look for.
A heroic can easily take as long or longer than that. Yet it's clear that there's plenty of people who can easily fit time for another heroic into their schedule, but not spend an hour reading, even though the latter makes them far more prepared for raiding than the former. So either they aren't able to get the information, which is a dangerous skill to lack in today's society, or they don't want to get it, which would make them the kind of idiots who'd say something like "it's only a game man, i have a life", which is clearly contradictory and I guess reveals a lot about them if you care to read into it.
In any case, this guide isn't going to help many people. It seems like people who'd have wanted to read it would have done so anyway, so I guess the people you are hitting here are the kind of people who drift aimlessly about doing heroics without any real goal in mind and now decides "well i guess gevlon is a cool guy, and as he is telling me how to prepare for raiding i might as well do that".
I guess I've been rambling for a while now. What I want to say is this - the guide is great, and contains valid and good information. What I doubt is that the people who need it will bother to follow it.
Lots of people mentioned the points change for arena (now requires more than twice as many arena wins for base cap) but Wintergrasp actually gives 5 weekly quests. You can get both defend siege and destroy tower if you hit it on both attack and defend. There is also the between battles quest where you gather 10 of something.
Not sure if Blizzard tightened up the RBG matching or what but last night our pairings were never against teams more than 100 MM points deference from us. Since you gain more than twice the CP per win through RBG, they might be worth farming for CP if enough people in a guild want to run them. Not exactly a tip for your guide but a tip nonetheless.
Buy Epic gear on the AH!
If you can't make 1k gold per hour you aren't a goblin, hence this guide wouldn't be for you anyway (it's called the GOBLIN way after all).
We had this discussion long ago, when I claimed that buying the epic inscription trinkets is as efficient as farming TB for rep/tokens or heroics for JP. Your response back then was:
"I would never farm that much rep (nor would I farm that much gold) for a single item."
Yet, you now suggest just that but exclude the epic gear from AH.
And before you start crunching numbers: 2 minutes per TB quest is a flat out lie. Even in a full group the traveling alone will take more time. And you didn't include the time necessary to find/form the group in the first place.
Don't get me wrong: I think it's a good guide. It just contradicts what you have said in discussions before. And it lacks the "buy epic gear on the ah" entry.
The PvP gloves for several classes also have a nice boost to certain skills on them, depending on the class they can be superior to even 359 PvE epics.
You might want to change the PvP guide; after 4.1 Randoms are officially the fastest way to gear. One win a day for a week will get you at least 1 piece of gear.
I am surprised you haven't mentioned Baradin Hold. 20 mins for a 1/5 chance at an ilvl 359 epic? Surely that is efficient enough to be on the list somewhere.
This might be my personal opinion, but at least for those determined in being a tank, EJs forum was always a lackluster. Tankspot and it's satelites (like Maintankadin or now closed Tankingtips) are so much better as a knowledge hub for this role. Might be worth mentioning, at least Tankspot.
If you're a paladin tank, Tankspot is a waste - go to maintankadin.failsafedesign.com instead.
90+% of "end-game" WoW players are DPS, though, and should go to Elitist Jerks anyways.
Good post! Will use this when I level my hunter. It's true that people that read this here already have plans for gearing up, but for me, it works well cause then i'll do I feel like doing.
Also, having all information in place saves me alot of time.
Cheers!
Post a Comment