The Glade 4.0

Yeah I quested through all the factions so I had a really nice boost.

I kinda like the Hodir dailies, or at least some of them. I like the one where you spear the wyrm and have to fight it in mid air before it kills you. On the other hand the one with the wolf tracking the dwarf infiltrator makes me cringe. Hate that one.

I saw a Titanium Razorplate for sale on the AH but it was 11k, ouch. I wonder if any friends could craft one for me though if I paid for mats.

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“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general”. - Mark Rippetoe

Mats are not likely to be that much cheaper.

On my server, Titansteel goes for 150 per bar (1500 total) and Crusader Orbs for 900-1k each (7200-8k total), so mats will likely run you around 9k give or take a bit.

You should look for someone to craft you the (much) cheaper versions that use Runed Orbs.

Or, if you get anything crafted, go for bracers/boots. The tier chest with Valor emblems is quite nice, as is the Imperial Joust BP from ToC normal.

I'd just put yourself up as LFG for ToC normal every time you log in, and leave it up while you do dailies- advertise occasionally in the LFG channel, and you'll get groups. If you can, hook up with a group doing a ToC farming run, where you do 5 runs back to back Or more.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

When Patch 3.3 comes out, Crusader Orb prices are likely to plummet. I don't expect 3.3 to hit for another month or more, though. So unless you get really good at playing the AH really fast I will second Nephyr's suggestions. :p

Lemme see here... ran a few searches for my rogue a bit ago. I'm a bit curious to see how they turn out for another class/spec. It's pretty easy to do when you know what to search for and employ the power of search filters. With just a minor adjustment to the searches, any class can benefit from this method, so this post can serve more than Dash alone. In this case, I've set it to gear usable by Paladins without any Spell Power (almost all healing gear), Defense (most tank gear), and Resilience (PVP gear). So here we go!

ToC 5 man regular (main search)
- cloak, bp, gloves, belt, helm, ring, trinket. As I understand it, neither the ring or the trinket are optimal for Paladins, but unless you can get one of the optimal ones these will still do you well. It has been pretty hard to find rings and cloaks with Str on them in Wrath, and armor pen isn't the most ideal of Paladin stats.

ToC 5 man heroic (main search)
- legs, shoulders, boots, bracers, neck. Neck carries the same caveat as above. There is also this axe which is a decent upgrade from the Champion's Seal sword, provided you can make up the hit elsewhere.

So with just ToC you could get helm, neck, shoulders, cloak, bp, bracers, gloves, belt, legs, boots, weapon, 1 ring, and 1 trinket. This leaves you with another ring, another trinket, and libram slot empty. :p Onward to perhaps not so coincidental loot from triumph emblems, added to the game at the same time as ToC!

Triumph badges (main search here)
- libram. This might want to be your first triumph badge buy. I'd have to check with a ret to be sure but the similar libram/idol/totem/etc slot items for 25 triumph emblems all end up with an uptime of nearly 100% with the buff it procs. That means nearly 100% uptime on 200 str for these 25 emblems. Very nice!
- ring. 35 emblems, pretty solid stats. With two ring slots to fill I doubt you can beat this.
- trinket. 128 hit is a ton. This is a blessing and a curse. For one, it's 50 triumph, which is kind of a lot (especially when you add in the libram and ring, which are both really top notch buys I believe), but if you can make use of that huge hit rating it will be worth it. The curse part comes in later when you're trying to stay around your hit cap whenever you get a new upgrade that gains or loses you hit. 128 on one item is unwieldy. :p I don't know if this is worth it or not... I mean, it's a great item, but you have to compare opportunity cost on not spending the emblems elsewhere.
- ilvl 232 ret set. T9 you can get without raiding! Shoulders and gloves you can get for 30 triumphs each, while the other three pieces are 50 triumphs each. If you get into ToC25 PUG raids, you may be able to get a Trophy (1 drops each boss) which essentially lets you get an upgraded version of any of these pieces. ToC25 and ToC10 raids also get you a TON of triumph emblems compared to the 2 per day per daily heroic quest.

There are some misc other pieces you can get for Triumph emblems, a hat and shoulders I think, but whether or not you should get them depends on a lot of factors and go beyond a simple list of a starting set of epic gear.

Conquest emblems... main search here All of these items are higher ilvl than the ToC 5 man drops, which as a general rule means they're better, but it still should be taken on a case-by-case basis. Check the search link for the results. Of note is the hat and bp token, the Wayward Conqueror stuff. This is 25 man T8 gear. I don't know if the 2 piece bonus is any good for ret pallies, but as a guess I'd say they'd be what you'd ideally want to start PUGing ToC10 and 25. Moonkin 2 set T8 bonus makes it good even with ToC 25 gear... so it all really depends.

Conquests can also be traded down for Valor and Heroism emblems on a 1:1 ratio. Search results for Valor emblems here, and results for Heroism here. You probably don't want any gear from the latter, though as you can see Heroism emblems have other uses, basically for when you run out of stuff to buy.

Lastly, crafted items - search results here. Click "Level" at the top of its column to sort the list by item level. The 226 belt and boots both should be affordable. I think The 200s are probably made obsolete by the drops from ToC 5 man.

My suggestion would probably be to run both normal and heroic ToC 5 man, a lot. Make sure to do the heroic daily for the 2 Triumphs per day. Run a bunch of other heroics too (pretty nice starter ring from the boss of Gundrak heroic if you really need expertise!) for Conquest emblems, though Naxx or Ulduar PUGs, provided they're not terrible, would also be a great source for Conquests. Buy T9 two piece from Conquests. Check the price of Runed Orbs on your AH, as they're for both of those ilvl 226 crafted items, as those would probably be great too. Runed Orbs can also be bought with Conquest emblems, so keep that in mind. Libram and ring from Triumphs are great buys, and if you feel comfortable doing ToC 10 or 25 PUGs, the Triumph emblems will come pretty fast.

Keep hit and expertise caps in mind while gearing up. I don't know exactly to what degree they're important to rets. I think hit is extremely important (as it is for nearly every dps class) while expertise isn't exactly vital, but still something you should try to make work.

Kinda crazy how fast you can gear out a char nowadays to be competitive in the current raiding tier, eh, without even doing much more than some 5 mans. :p

Whether you can make up the hit or not, upgrade to the Edge of Ruin or Marrowstrike without a second thought. The ~30 raw DPS increase will be much larger than even dropping under hit cap.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

I also forgot about the Darkmoon Card: Greatness. Still probably pretty expensive, but it is a very good trinket.

Wow thanks for all the tips boys. I'll have to check all this out now. Noggel those searches help me a lot.

I have my Hit capped and could use more expertise rating but overall I just need to graduate from my blues to group/instance/raid gear. How long does a typical 5 man regular ToC run take by the way?

I see a lot of advertising for ToC 10 mans but those are typically the sort who specify some sort of criteria to join them. Last night I think the person wanted an achievement sent to them, i.e. please send tell with achievement, which I was assuming was your achievement score? Or is there some achievement you get for successfully completing ToC 10 man and he wanted veterans?

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“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general”. - Mark Rippetoe

Now, I'd say that a ToC 5 man should take 20 minutes or less.

ToC 10 is one of the harder raids currently released, on the general scale Naxx-> Ulduar-> ToC -> ToGC (ToC Heroic).

Granted, 10 man is the easiest of that, but...

If you head to Wow-heroes.com, you can get what is a generally accepted gear score for yourself, and it will also tell you what instances (heroics/raids) you should be doing for the most gain.

And yes, link achievement means he wants veterans so he doesn't have to explain anything.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

That's about what I expected. Under a half hour or so.



See that's one of the good things about WoW. After playing less popular MMO's you realize how many more resources this game has.

Ok so according to this I'm reading it as Naxx is one I'm easily in range of doing with my gear and ToC 10 man is doable as well while Icecrown Citadel would be very difficult.

http://wow-heroes.com/index.php?zone=us ... me=Dashhal

Pretty cool. I am close to some upgrades too so that will be fun to track thanks

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“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general”. - Mark Rippetoe

Red means do not enter, for the most part.

If the icon is in the green, then it'll be pretty easy. Yellow should be where you'll see a bit of a challenge and usually ample upgrades.

As your gear improves, you'll start to see the red line shrinking as green & yellow expand.

Uinan is correct. Red means 'you will be carried through this', for the most part.

For reference, here is mine:

For me, I should be doing 10 man Ony and ToC, as well as 25 man Uld (all yellow) with 25 Ony and 25 ToC after a few upgrades.

Also, feel free to use my character as an upgrade guide- it's almost all heroic/badge gear, with 1 raid piece (VoA PvP gloves) thrown in.

It's not the best in the world, but you can do really well not setting your foot in a raid.

I took a second to upgrade your gear with crafted/ToC normal gear:

http://www.wowhead.com/?profile=17258304

Go for those- Spiked Titansteel is good stuff, the helm you won't need to replace until you can get the T8 set.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

Ummmm, no ...

Trial of the Crusader (10-Man) is ZZzzzVille ... the fights in Ulduar are harder. In fact, we've got a 10-Man we run on Saturdays that cleared it last week with 10 Fresh 80s, most of which didn't even have any badge loot.

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Ah well in that case I'm very undergeared I see heh. That's ok though that's what I expected to see. Hopefully the level 200 epics I get from faction grinding will boost me up some more and ToC stuff as well.

Edit: and I can do Heroic dailies maybe in this gear?

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“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general”. - Mark Rippetoe

Yeh. TotC is ezsauce. Fights in Ulduar are harder generally.

Now, TotGC? That's a different story.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Dash you can probably raid the moment you hit 80 if you play well and aren't a tank.

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Run ToC normal first, pick up the upgrades I suggested (see above post). At that point, you will be geared enough for any heroic, including Heroic ToC.

Run HToC and the Daily and anything else to collect upgrades/badge gear.

Faction grinding is good, it is now where your main upgrades will come from. Within the week you could get all you need from ToC normal and have collected quite a few badges from heroics.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

Perhaps hard is the wrong word, and 'gear dependent' is the word I'm looking for.

People are going to be a lot pickier about your gear heading into ToC10 than into Uld 10. At least on my server.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

Oooh. I like that site, thanks guys...

http://wow-heroes.com/index.php?zone=us ... ame=Tahlla

I'm actually rather pleased with the results, considering I have hardly been playing for the last two months, have never done TOC-10, only finished Onyxia-10 for the first time on thursday, and never even finished Ulduar (10 or 25.)

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

/agree with Khross. Totc 10 and 25 are both quite easy, and are pugged even on my completely-horrible-for-pugs server. Many Ulduar fights are much more difficult, particularly the hard modes.

You can do heroics and naxx/os the moment you hit 80 as long as you aren't tanking (or possibly healing) them. I understand that it may be difficult to find a group with poor gear on some servers, but mine isn't plagued by the link achieve or gearscore crap that some are. You have to remember though, all first tier raids in wotlk had been cleared within days of the expansion coming out (3? if I remember correctly). While obviously this was done by a hard core raiding guild, 3 days isn't much time to get 10 levels and gear up in heroics. They mostly used their t6 and gear from sunwell I would assume.

Here's hoping that normal (ie easy) mode IC isn't as easy as totc turned out to be, it was just a huge disappointment all around.

WoW-Heroes and MaxDPS are both problematic, because they go solely on item level.

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Yea true, but someone finally knocked someone on the head (or a plate DPS guy started working in item design) because there are finally some good budgeted items in the finger/neck slots and miscellaneous non-set piece slots. Lots of STR, Crit, Haste and enough Hit ... the ArP is kinda stupid as it gimps DK's and Pallies, but doesn't matter as I'm in the process of transferring my warrior over to Horde and my home server, anyhow.

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"It's real, grew up in trife life, the times of white lines
The hype vice, murderous nighttimes and knife fights invite crimes" - Nasir Jones

I can understand wanting decent players if you're gonna pug. You cant know if they're good or not so you're stuck using gear/achievements as a marker. I could be 10x the player than some dude in great gear but no way to convey that really.

Under geared and not knowing the fight though is a bad combo. I've been reading up on them and watching vids but still doesnt match actually doing it a few times.

In any case, I never see people LFG on regular ToC. I may have to start my own even though I've never done the run before Still, it looks extremely simple to do so meh.

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“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general”. - Mark Rippetoe

If you start one up, make sure you start a farming run.

I never see it advertised, but you can frequently get people to come do it- especially if you can get an enchanter for some nice Abyss Shard farming.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

Quick Guide to ToC for Melee DPS.

1. Northrend Beasts
A) Gormok. Beat the snot out of him. Don't worry overmuch about the stun, its pretty harmless.
B) Not one but TWO Worms. Depending on the group, you may do one at a time, or both at once. We've always done one at a time. Beat up one, then the other. Don't stand in the green ****. Don't stand in front of them. If you get the green **** on you, go stand by the guy with the red **** on him. Just for a tick though. The red **** hurts. If you get the red **** on you, go stand next to the tank if he has the green **** on him. Again, just for a tick. Killing the tank with red **** is frowned upon.
C) Icehowl. He should be tanked next to a wall. You should DPS with your back against said wall. Every once in a while, he'll jump to the center and fling every one against the walls. He looks at someone, then charges that person. If he tramples someone, he enrages for massive damage. If he looks at you run AWAY. If he's not looking at you, and you're not in his path, stay away, but be close to get in and whoop his ***.

Loot.

2. Jaraxxus the Gnome Slayer
A)Wilfred Fizzlebang. Don't worry about this little tool, Jaraxxus will kill him for you.
B) Jaraxxus, Eredar Lord of the Burning Legion. Beat him up. You may be on dispel duty if you can do that. He has a buff that makes his fireballs huge.
C) Mistress of Pain (AKA The Dirty Whore) Every few minutes, Jaraxxus gets tired of being beaten up by a bunch of smelly adventurers, and opens a gate to let his sister in so we can beat in her instead. Get ready to switch targets, but wait until the Dirty Whore actually comes through. The gate has an AE that goes off when she comes in. Burn her skanky *** down, and get back to beating Jaraxxus.
D) Infernal volcanos. After we beat up his sister, he summons some volcano things that summon some infernals. They'll turn into a ball and fly around and blow up. Let the ranged DPS handle them, they have a PBAE. It sucks.

Loot.

3. Faction Champions.
A) Make sure the kids aren't around.
B) Swear a lot. Run around a lot while CC'd.
C) Loot.

4. The Twins.
A) Grab the opposite color from the one you'll be DPSing.
B) Every once in a while, balls will come from the walls. If you can, grab ones that match the color you picked. Don't really go out of your way to do so though. That's what Ranged DPS are for.
C) They will do a special ability. Sometimes one skanky flying ho will shield the other skanky flying ho and then try to heal them both for 20% of their health. This is annoying to say the least. Beat the snot out of the one that's shielded. Then interrupt the cast any way you can.
D) They have another special ability that may require you to change color. If you don't, you will die. If you have to change color, go beat on the other twin. Don't worry about changing back. Just keep the beating going on the other flying ho.
E) Loot.

5) Anub'Arak
A) Phase 1 Beat his ***. When the other bug guys come up, wait till assist is called, then beat their ***.
B) He'll go under the ground and chase people. Finish beating his buddies up, and if he chases you, make him path through one of the patches of ice on the ground. If he's not chasing you, stay away from the spikes and beat up his other little bug buddies.
C) Repeat A.
D) Phase 3. Beat his *** more. As hard as you can. Yes. Harder than that. Lay into him like he's Angelina Jolie and you're Billy Bob Thornton.
E) Loot.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Haha, my server has to be one of the worst for using gearscore and achievement links.

After Koralon had been out for less than a week, 80% of the PuGs were requiring his Ach to run with them. People are even starting to require 3k+ DPS for heroics.... or 35khp + as a paladin/warrior tank. It's insane.

But yeah, 3k training dummy/heroic DPS is nowhere close enough to getting me a spot on a ToC 10 man raid on my server. The PuGs require at least 5k+. Ulduar, on the other hand, not so tight with the requirements.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

This ToC is the 10/25 man version right?

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“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general”. - Mark Rippetoe