The Glade 4.0

I am embarrassed by my armory.

I do not have all of the rep items yet, I still need more faction for some of them.
Golgol - on the new fangled armory

yes I shamelessly took my name from the leader of the Get of Fenris.

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Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut

Your darkmoon greatness card is certainly holding you back as far as item level is concerned. There is a trinket off the croc boss in Lost City of Tol'Vir that should be at least 333. I'd suggest running that like crazy. Also, do your Tol Barad dailies every day since there is a 359 epic trinket once you hit exalted. There should also be a belt, bracer and shoulders of at least 333 from the various rep vendors(you can get shoulders and helm from the Justice point vendor as well, but justice points come pretty slowly when all you can do is run normal dungeons). There are crafted epics, too...but you'd have to get someone else to craft for you since you can't get Chaos orbs yet.

Get revered with Therazane to replace that agility ring you've got. Replacing the agility cloak you've got should also be priority since agility doesn't help you like, at all, even though it is 346...and again, your necklace is also agility. I'm almost positive one of the reps has an epic str necklace, but it might be tanking. Can't recall offhand. But seriously, upgrade the greatness card and you might hit 329 from that alone.

EDIT:

Ignore cloak of war, that's a tanking cloak. But Hyjal has an epic str dps belt at exalted, Ramhaken has several upgrades for you as well. I would focus on those two for upgrades while doing Tol Barad dailies to get that trinket and running Lost City of Tol'Vir for the trinket.

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Los Angeles Kings 2014 Stanley Cup Champions

"I love this **** team right here."
-Jonathan Quick

Dark,
I hit 330 avg by running 5 instances total and buying rep rewards. Don't forget that item level also counts what's in your bags, so I ended up buying a cheap (30g) cloak, that I would never use, to sit in my bags that would put me over.

Odd question...did they change buff icons or something? When I target someone of my own faction now, who is not in my group, I can no longer see what beneficial spells they have active. If you're grouped with the target, I can see them just fine though. I've played around with the Interface options a tonne but I can't seem to figure out what to enable / change / whatever. I'm usually just curious to see what mount people are riding.

From my very casual playing......my hunter hit 85 finally, and leveled as BM spec. Killing stuff took longer, but the pet was pretty tough and reliable. I switched over to MM spec, and while the pet isn't as durable, I am doing around 2k more dps I also found that in my current gear while questing/farming.....if I use Cobra Shot instead of Steady Shot w/Aimed procs.....I do about 300 dps more also. Hrmph

Finally about half way thru Twilight, and noticed that damn zone has bug issues galore. Like Blizzard got to that zone and said "screw it, finish it anyways".

I've also noticed that I am finding it hard to keep all my characters played regularly atm. Thus my farming for mats has gone down, as has production....... I've barely scratched at them. And after doing dailies, I haven't the time to do much with anything else.

I finally got two trinkets today and finished up my pre-raid gear. I now have little to no reason to run heroics past the first(for valor). Sitting at 349 average item level. Did some Magmaw tonight as well and I'm pretty sure he will die tomorrow. Things are looking pretty good.

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Los Angeles Kings 2014 Stanley Cup Champions

"I love this **** team right here."
-Jonathan Quick

Magmaw is a fun fight.

RODEO!!!!

Hit 85 today, woohoo! Are the normal dungeons worth running, or should I just continue questing and raising rep to get the faction rewards until Heroics? I've got about half each of Vash'jr and Deepholme to do; and all of Uldum and Twilight Highlands.

Well, normal level 85 dungeons will get you level 333 gear to replace some quest stuff you likely still have. Once you hit 329 avg item level, you can start heroics which drop 346 I believe, which is the same as most rep rewards.

You're pretty much looking at running Origination, Grim Batol and Tol'vir until you hit heroics level, then just run whatever you can get.

Don't forget that level 85 normals also give rep. Earthen Ring and Hyjal, for example, don't have daily quests for rep, so you have to get it in the instances.

_________________
Los Angeles Kings 2014 Stanley Cup Champions

"I love this **** team right here."
-Jonathan Quick

You have to get to a min average gear score before you can queue for heroics. 329 if I remember right. Additionally, it's pretty much impossible to get to revered or exalted with most factions without running instances while wearing a tabard.

This expansion is very linear in it's progression. Questing for greens/some blues to be able to successfully run normals. Mix in normals to get geared enough to run heroics, run heroics to be able to raid.

And heroics in Cata are no joke. Bring situational awareness, or die horribly. Often die horribly anyway because the rest of the pug didn't bring situational awareness.

I have ventured deep into the hallowed core, dethroned Lord Victor Nefarius atop Blackrock Mountain, and removed an Old God threat from deep beneath the earth of Kalimdor.

I have set back Kael'thas's schemes, put an end to Lady Vashj, dethroned Illidan as ruler of Outlands, and beat back the mighty Kil'Jaeden from entering our world.

I have put an end to the undead offensive in the dread necropolis Naxxramas, stomped out an Old God threat (I sorta do that often) from within an ancient prison, and dethroned the Lich King himself (I do a lot of dethroning too).

But nothing in all my days has been so bleakly soulcrushing as the time I have spent...

...digging up shards of history out of dirt.

Hateful, hateful Archaeology.

Man.

What do you hate about it? I leveled mine to 525 without to much trouble really, made some decent coin out of it and got a couple cool items along the way (I was lucky enough to get the caster trinket at like 515 or something)

It's not exactly the most fun profession, but is it really any different than the others?

Jesus. People really like to whine about Archeology. There's nothing wrong with it. It isn't supposed to be a fast track to epics. I really wish they never put the epics in there in the first place.

_________________
Los Angeles Kings 2014 Stanley Cup Champions

"I love this **** team right here."
-Jonathan Quick

Anyone that thinks archeology isn't mind-numbingly boring is nuts.

All trade skills are mind numbingly boring. That doesn't mean there is something wrong with them.

_________________
Los Angeles Kings 2014 Stanley Cup Champions

"I love this **** team right here."
-Jonathan Quick

I already have all the epics I want from it, so it's not that.

As someone that can't use Zin'rokh, though, yet wants to get Tol'vir items, I spend something like 85% of the time I spend on Archaeology digging getting absolutely nothing. Have all the NE rares, have both the fossil rares, and there's only 1 dwarf site in the entirety of Kalimdor.

Then I save up over 600 Tol'Vir fragments and 9 of the hieroglyphs (sell for 800-1000g each) for today and get... nothing. 4 Canopic Jars today alone but still no Vial of the Sands recipe.

Friend of mine has spent hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours digging for Zin'rokh. No sword. Spends a handful of hours on rated BGs and a handful of Arenas. Gets welfare epic sword.

I don't mind Archaeology itself actually, since it's a pretty ideal thing to do while chatting over IM or whatever, and I do that a lot.

The RNG is just brutal though. Hours and hours and hours and hours for... well I guess they give you a handful of gold back, so I can't say nothing. Too bad WoW has little to spend gold on. :p Granted, it shouldn't be too fast to get items, but...

...I guess it's mostly the whole "85% of the dig sites I get are useless" thing. Still have over 9k NE fragments leftover that I'm thinking of trying to hold onto for the distant future, and that's AFTER getting every NE item. Yet I still have 4 things left to get from Tol'Vir... out of 7, counting the Vial of the Sands recipe. Craziness.

Way too many bugs are making it to live and not being addressed. Blizzard needs to get it's **** together. Grumble

Like? Honestly the only "bug" that I can think of is that the sound progression on Atramedies is kinda wonky.

If it makes you feel better, 7 (!) new Tol'Vir dig sites were added in the patch tuesday

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It seems to have helped get more Tol'Vir digs.

The formula seems to be:

x = sites_Available(Kalimdor);
If (x < 4)
{
makeAvailable = sites_Kalimdor(random);
}

And since so few Tol'Vir sites existed, you kept getting stuck in Desolace (before 4.0.6) or Feralas.

Now that more Tol'Vir exist, you aren't as stuck.

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Once, I was a ranger
Then, I was a warlock
And a mage
And a paladin
Now, I seek to be myself

Yeah I was quite pleased to see this! Perhaps that along with making the common items occasionally somewhat worthwhile from a gold point of view sorta fixes the inherent problem I mentioned before. While the return rate of gold sucks, at least it's not totally insignificant now, so there aren't "worthless" sites anymore I suppose (though there's the whole argument whether gold past 50k is worth anything anyway, but that's another discussion! :p) It shouldn't be so psychologically bad now either, where before it wasn't uncommon to hit an unlucky streak and clear 20+ sites without getting a Tol'Vir one. Or at least make it a lot less likely, at any rate? I've been gearing up an alt to help with raids instead of digging lately so I haven't tried it yet. :p

I heard Nerubian was similarly bad so the change would make sense there too. I haven't left Kalimdor yet though. Not til Tol'Vir is finished!

I decided to try and work on getting a Volcano deck...started reading up on how much **** is involved in making one! Not sure if I want to follow t hrough now...but that effect is oh so nice.

Is it different than before? IIRC, all decks were/are a PITA to create from production. This is why so many people try to trade in /tradechat to get the ones they don't already have.

I guess its the same. I never tried to make one before, I just knew that Inscriptionists had something to do with it.

It seems like its either a giant money or time sink. Mine will probably be a little bit of both, since I don't have a Herbalist to use for herb farming. so I'm just planning on keeping my the AH and buying cheap herbs when they come up. My good friend back home has a herbalist on her account, but since authenticators were introduced account sharing isn't doable