Blog Archives
Alpha to Omega – Warlords of Draenor
I think I can safely say that I’m done with leveling for a long time.
Odingreen, the Swole Sorcerer, has become the fourteenth character I’ve taken to the promised land of level 100. But what makes him different is that he was the first mage I’d ever played, and the first character that I powered through from the first level of one, all in a few hours a week. I didn’t play often, but when I did I was solely focused on leveling him up. Zone by zone, expansion by expansion, each had it’s highs and lows.
Oddly enough, Warlords of Draenor was just more of the same.
There’s a reason I held WoD at a different standard going into it. For all intents and purposes, this should have been the easiest stretch to level through. There are ample posts describing fast and easy ways to knock out those levels in about two hours. There’s videos too, like this one –
Leveling from 90 to 100 in Two Hours
As you can see, the key to this speed leveling process is prep work. The formula is simple to follow: enter a zone, find each bonus objective in the zone and complete the required kill/collect tasks except for one (one kill, one item to be collected), then move on to the next bonus objective. Drink an Elixir of the Rapid Mind, finish off each objective, gather some treasures in between, and watch the levels fly by.
Sure, seems easy enough when you look at it like that. Actually it is easy enough. I’ve used that very same strategy with Hunters, Warriors, and Death Knights. Here’s where I became frustrated with Mages, and the process in general.
- Lack of gear. Heirloom items are great to have, but when you have a character with a mix of gear that fluctuates between iLevels 100 and 500, your performance is going to suffer. This can be a problem because…
- Mages are glass tanks. I’m used to using classes that are either Hunters with tanking pets, or melee dps classes that can stand in the pocket and throw down, face-to-face. Mages have to try and burn down the mob before it gets to them, because if they don’t they’re going to get torn apart. Bonus objective mobs tend to hit a little harder than regular mobs, which makes completing them quite painful when you can’t take a punch.
This process was painful. There were many deaths. Many, many deaths. Odingreed died more in this expansion than he did in Wrath, Cataclysm, and MoP combined. This could have been a result of me being a raw rookie when it came to Mages, but the fact that he had to take punches from giants wearing nothing but the same items you’re probably wearing when you read this.
But in the end…
Ding!
As good a feeling as that might be, Odingreen’s journey wasn’t over yet. Step One was to take a class I’d never played before and level him from 1 – 100. Done and done.
Step Two was to get him raiding, and to kill Archimonde, the final raid boss in Warlords of Draenor. Odingreen was going to go from killing boars outside Goldshire to killing giant World Beaters on other planets, all in a couple of weeks, just to show that it doesn’t have to be intimidating to get into the raiding scene. But the next step is going to involve gearing up, since he’s going to need an iLevel of 650 to get into LFR for Archimonde.
Now before any of the elitist raiding community comes down on me by saying “LFR isn’t real raiding anyway”, I’d like to direct your attention to the general direction of my dick. LFR is a tool, a gateway into a more committed raiding mindset. Or at the very least, just a way to see some cool content/mechanics/find out what the hell everyone keeps talking about.
Is LFR raiding? It’s right there in the acronym – Looking For Raid. There’s philosophies regarding this, but I’m not sweating that right now. This isn’t about labels – it’s about killing. And isn’t that what gaming is all about?
Damn straight. Crushed candies are dead candies, am I right?
Alpha to Omega – Cataclysm
Had to take a picture to remember even being there.
As with most things I do, it isn’t until after I finish something that I realize there’s something more there to discuss. Sometimes I’ll backtrack, sometimes I’ll address it in the future. I mentioned things in the last Alpha to Omega post that I should have put a bit more focus on. I feel there were topics that just didn’t get their due attention.
Take now, for example. Specifically the Elixirs of the Rapid Mind. This is great for leveling when you’ve been through the process a few times, give or take a dozen. I was actually starting to get to that leveling burnout point with Odingreen once he’d reached level 73. I was so tempted that I mentioned my dilemma on Twitter, hoping to stir some kind of conversation or at least get some feedback.
The retweet was nice at least.
So to help to get through the leveling grind, Odingreen bought a few of these elixirs from the AH and put them to work. As I mentioned in my last post, they really helped me push through the burnout wall.
Now that Odingreen had jumped into a new pool of content, the question became how to make the most of these elixirs in Cataclysm content. We’re talking five levels here. How fast could Odingreen get through those levels using the Elixir of the Rapid Mind?
Answer: Less than an hour.
There are guides on Youtube, quite a few in fact, for leveling quickly through Cataclysm. The key to them, so they say, is by grinding dungeons under the influence of the Elixir of the Rapid Mind. But those videos, for the most part, are a bit misleading. What these videos forget to mention is that for the dungeon crushing to be effective, you also need a level 100 friend to carry you through them. He (or she) kills the dungeon while you either stand at the entrance, or follow behind at a safe distance.
Of course, if you have a well-geared friend who is willing to subject himself (or herself) to this, then by all means go for it. However if you’re solo for whatever reason (we’re all friends here, we don’t judge), then just pop an E of the RM and quest. It might not be as OMG WFT BBQ fast as being carried repeatedly through dungeons, but it’s still pretty damn silly fast.
As far as Cataclysm content goes, well here’s some “sage” advice from the Muscle Mage himself, Odingreen.
Odingreen’s Tips for Leveling From 80 to 85 Using the Elixir of the Rapid Mind
- Avoid Dungeons when using The Elixir. “It’s just not worth risking your time. Sure you can drink it just as the final boss is about to die, but if you’re in a PuG then you definitely don’t want to risk wasting the elixir (and gold, cause these damn things aren’t cheap) by chugging it when you first start your dungeon run. You may have facerolled through Outland and Northrend, but in my experience there are more people who tend to, how should I put this, have their head stuck up their ass as they push content. They wouldn’t know hard work if it jumped up and bit them in the ass. Adversity, for them, involves whining and kicking people who don’t overpower the content and can’t carry their lazy asses. There’s no leveling gainz to be made that way. Don’t waste your buffed time and precious gold on Johnny Waddafak knowing how to work the boss mechanics. If you want to run dungeons for loot, achievements, or whatever, then do it without wasting an elixir.”
- Quest hard and often. “This is where you make fast and sizeable leveling gainz. I took a hit of the RM just as I was about to hand in four quests at a group hub, and just bounced from there. There’s plenty of questing hubs available in Mt Hyjal, Deepholm, and… well I can’t speak for the other places because I didn’t have to go there. Yeah. Five levels, two zones, fourth wall be damned.”
- Finish off your RM before leaving the zone. “Cataclysm is the Land of the Song and Dance. There’s cutscenes for the cutscenes, for Chrissake! Every new zone you go to involves a production of some kind. The last thing you want to do is have RM rolling while you watch video roll, and you have to knock off a quest or two before you even get into the zone. If you’ve got plenty of time left, then risk it if you want. But generally I’d suggest sticking around and getting more quests done until the RM wears off rather than waste precious time moving from zone to zone.”
- Pull the pin at 85. “That thing I just said? Yeah, about that. I did 80 to 82.5 in Mt. Hyjal, at 82.5 to 85 in Deepholm. Once you reach 85, the experience from quest rewards drop off a cliff, headfirst. I went from around 50,000 xp at 84, to 14,000 xp a couple of quests later at 85. As a mage my transition from Cataclysm to Mists of Pandaria was pretty quick because teleports. Also, I’m good like that. It probably took me about five minutes from the time I ported to Stormwind to the time I completed my first quest in Pandaria. Granted there were a couple of quests that I had to complete on my way to Panda Land, but those rewards easily offset the low xp I would have earned had I stayed in Deepholm to finish off my RM.”
Elixir of the Rapid Mind + Heirlooms = powerleveling in a bottle.
Rokk Talk 