Posts with tag soloing

Every week, Spiritual Guidance will offer practical insight for priests of the holy profession. Your host today is Alex Ziebart who doesn't have as many cool links to plug up here as Matticus does but will try anyway. This week we get our Shadowform on..

Dual specs are coming, probably only a week away, and I suspect that many Holy and/or Discipline Priests out there will be picking up a Shadow build as their second spec. Priests, like most classes, can have many little build variations to fit your playstyle: Raiding, soloing, doing Battlegrounds, doing arenas, all of that. I'm going to look at a couple of good PvE specs to use in patch 3.1, but unfortunately avoiding the PvP specs for you arena junkies in our audience. Trust me, you don't want to take my advice there. Discipline PvP maybe, but not Shadow.

PvE Shadow - Raiding
MMO-Champion has a great tool for setting up talent specs, because you can include your glyphs as well, so we're going to be using that. This spec (14/0/57) will be a fairly cookie-cutter raiding build in patch 3.1, with only very minor variations from person to person. The Shadow tree isn't a very complicated one. Either a talent boosts your DPS, or it does something else. For a raiding spec, you want all of the DPS talents and you can skip all of the 'something else' talents unless they're mandatory for a DPS talent. It's pretty straightforward. Even in the Discipline tree the ultimate goal is to pick up the DPS talents, Twin Disciplines and Improved Inner Fire. Meditation isn't a direct DPS talent, but having no mana is certainly a DPS hit.

Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.

What? Me lace a post title with jealousy? I would never do that! Never ever! Okay, okay, maybe there's some jealousy there. Can you blame me? Screw purps, I want me some orange. Orange is where it's at, cat.

erogroth asked...

I have a question about legendary items. Do we know what Legendary items are planned for WotLK? Are there currently any in the game? If not what are planned for the future or can we speculate? It sounds like Ashbringer will not be a item that a player will be able to get. Is that true? Also, what about upgrade quest for old world legendary items. It seems like so much work went into getting them (Thunderfury anyone?) that it seems a shame that they are worthless.

Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky will be your host today.

As Alex mentioned yesterday, he and I will be taking turns with the queue. So don't fret, Alex will be back in your loving graces tomorrow. As this is my first post for the queue, I feel like I'm boldly going where no man (Alex is a superman) has gone before. And who better to welcome me than John de Lancie's iconic Q character? With Picard oddly facepalming himself... huh. I hope this isn't a sign of things to come. Anyways, I digress. On with the Q!

037 asked...

"Is it possible to solo Zul'Durub to farm the mounts? If it makes a difference, I am a 10 Man Naxx geared Enhancement Shaman."

As Elizabeth observed a few days ago, there are certain pleasures to being 80. Even if you haven't gotten a shiny drop from a raid or a heroic yet, or finished grinding your way to exalted with a Wrath faction, you have one thing that absolutely no one can take away from you: an ever-increasing chance to leave classic and Burning Crusade-level mobs swinging fruitlessly at the air, completely unable to hit you.

Just writing that gives me a disturbingly evil smile, because one of the things I've enjoyed most since hitting 80 is soloing heroic Sethekk in pursuit of the Raven Lord mount. Hi there, Syth. Remember the days when you used to mop the floor with my furry ass? I do, and this dish of revenge is being served to you at the proper temperature, courtesy of the frigid Northrend climate. How does it feel to be killed just because you're on the way to something bigger?

Sure, getting together with 40 of your best friends and leading an epic raid on the alternate faction's capitol city can be fun, but I have to say that there's fun to be had doing things all by yourself, too. Some classes were soloing Onyxia at level 70 -- and it seems like just about everyone can solo her at or near level 80. (For those thinking of trying this yourself -- it's good fun and not a bad amount of gold for the effort.) Zul'Gurub and Ahn'Qiraj (the 20-man wing, at least) have both been cleared (mostly) by a lone player. Karazhan has been cleared with a group of 3 -- though in our post-Wrath world, I'd imagine that everything save Netherspite could be easily managed with less. (And at some point even Netherspite is bound to be overcome by brute force.)

To solo or not to solo, that is the question. Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous Hunters (who sometimes seem to think they have a monopoly on soloing content) or to take arms against a sea of dragons (dragons, elementals, demons -- we're not picky), and by opposing, earn epic (albeit under-level) loot. So, tell us, what have you soloed lately?

Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft.

Welcome back! Before we start, I'd like to take a moment to remind all of you that Winter Veil starts tomorrow at 6 AM! Are you excited? I'm excited. After the next couple of days, keep an eye on WoW Insider for some great holiday guides and features. Now, let's get to the Q&A shall we?

Flint asked...

Is it possible for a level 80 hunter to solo any of the lowest level Outland instances, or will the boss fights be way too much for one person to handle by himself?

With how fascinated players are with using Onyxia as a benchmark, it was only a matter of time before our new legions of Death Knights tried their hand at it. Scarblade, a poster from the MMO-Champion forums, seems to hold the prize for world first solo Onyxia kill by a Death Knight. At least, as far as we know, and as of the latest beta patch. Will it count when Wrath goes retail? Who knows? We're a fickle bunch. Either way, I sincerely doubt many others attempted this as a Death Knight before Scarblade, because running around doing those attunement quests on the beta realms must be brutal even at level 80. You're just going to have to do it all over again!

Still, Scarblade was a trooper and went through the whole ridiculous attunement process. He says he tried both Frost and Blood specs before ultimately settling on an Unholy build that won the day for him. Personally, I expected this kill to have been done using a deep Blood talent spec with how well they solo. I suppose Onyxia isn't the same as your random elite thug hanging out in the middle of a field somewhere, so it makes sense that what works there might not be best in Ony's Lair. Unholy does make sense though, controlling those whelps can make or break an Onyxia attempt no matter how many people you take with you. Unholy Blight is a beautiful thing.

Yes, Scarblade did earn an Achievement for killing the ol' gal. Two, actually. One for just plain killing her, and one for killing her solo.

[ via MMO-Champion ]

Amidst all the excitement surrounding the coming of Wrath and the beta testing revelations, I have a question. Does anybody care that Death Knights will be OP? I disagree with my fellow bloggers when they surmise that the upcoming Wrath world will not be overpopulated by Death Knights. On the contrary, I think you won't be able to sneeze without three Death Knights around you to say Gesundheit. And what's more I think they won't be a flash-in-the-pan like the Blood Elves and Draenei overpopulations were.

I believe this because I hate tanking and have never liked playing melee classes (my main is an elemental shaman and my highest alt is a warlock) and yet I'm having HUGE fun in the beta realm playing a Death Knight. I've played the class PvE to level 65, trying all three specs multiple times. I no longer fear dueling. I solo group quests that are above my level. I can approach elites one level higher than myself, alone and with no fear. I just run into a group of mobs with little strategy and almost always survive.

Although I think the clarity of the purpose for each spec is still a bit muddy, I see Death Knights mostly filling a tanking role. (Perhaps this was Blizzard's response to the tank shortage? Make a tank so fun to play that lots of people will play them?) And yet Death Knights have soloing capabilities like warlocks and hunters -- only they survive better. They are by far the best soloing class I've tried. For illustration purposes, I even made a goofy movie showing how badly you can play a Death Knight and still take some serious names without dying once.

Blizzard has proved that it knows what it's doing over the last four years. However, the current class system even without Death Knights has always had complaints about balance. As even Blizzard itself has admitted, adding a new class is not easy. Perhaps I am wrong and the tweaks they are making to the existing classes for Wrath will make everyone feel like they are overpowered. As it is, though, playing my new Death Knight gives me such a feeling of power that I've never had in the game before that I can't imagine that there won't be a lot of other players like me when Wrath hits the shelves this fall. Will this be good for class balance? More importantly, will anybody care?

So here's yet another example of how mutable Death Knights are at the moment: This week, I decided to spec Blood all week and make a genuine effort to learn all the ins and outs I could so that I could bring you a good solid overview of Blood for this weekend's column.

Then build 8820 came along, and Blood, while having the same basic mechanics, got a rather big hit to its health regeneration and DPS abilities, and I'm left trying to figure out the extent of the damages. In the end, I don't think Blood was horribly nerfed in this build, but it might have been slightly overnerfed.

Totem Talk's Matthew Rossi has had a small Horde renaissance this week, and decided to take his slightly dusty Resto shaman out for a spin, healing a heroic MgT run and then running about the IoQD doing the dailies. Turns out he learned a few things in the process. He wrote a little song about it, like to hear it? Here it goes.

Okay, I apologize, but there will be no singing. Tell you what, if enough people demand it, I'll belt one out on the next WoW Insider Show I'm on.

I've posted in the past about how to quest, grind and otherwise solo on a Restoration shaman, but I didn't go sufficiently into detail as the post ended up being about the odd things people think about shamans. So this week, we'll go more into detail. There are basically two ways you can go about doing this, thanks to the recent changes Blizzard made to healing gear: you can go out and quest in your regular healing set or you can also have a set of DPS gear. Unlike a priest and more like fellow hybrids like druids, you have a choice of what kind of DPS gear to wear. You could have a set of Enhancement mail and a big 2h weapon (since Resto shammies can't dual wield but can use 2h's now) and run around hitting stuff, or you could go for the spell damage gear and imagine that you're a powerful Elemental shaman.

My own personal preference (due to that fact that my shaman has a lot of Enhancement gear) is to go the whackity whackity route and Windfury up a 2h. But in the interests of experimentation I tried both spell damage gear and my normal healing setup, and I found that my personal preference is in fact the least effective of the three for the gear I happen to have. I'm sure no one is surprised.

At any rate, let's talk turkey. Isn't turkey delicious? Druids can turn into humanoid-turkey hybrids. None of this has anything to do with Shamans of any spec soloing anything, but I've always wondered about the phrase 'let's talk turkey' and how anyone could resist saying "yay, I love stuffing!" after it. I'll get a hold of myself now. Actual details of Shaman soloing behind the jump. Whee!

Lauren of the Mystic Worlds Blog has a new post up called "Why we Solo in MMOs," offering her perspective on why, over many years and many MMOs, she has always tended to ignore the grouping game and instead go it alone. While I'm not against grouping at all -- I was very active in the 40 man raid game, and tend to run Heroics around once a week and Karazhans around 1.5 times a week across my 3 70s -- I've always felt that the solo game has a valid spot in MMORPGs, and I've often indulged in it myself. In fact, I'd bet that most WoW players do so on a regular basis these days, whether leveling up or doing their dailies.

She rattles off the usual list of reasons for going solo -- having a weird schedule, needing to take frequent "real life" breaks, not having enough time to go LFG for a dungeon, unwillingness to deal with the infamous horrible PuG group -- then takes it a step further. She believes that many people use these types of statements as excuses or defense against people who can't understand why they wish to solo in a multiplayer game, or actively flame them for it, and that the real reasons are a lot less complicated.

Though everyone talks about it a lot, raiding or even grouping isn't the only way to achieve something in the World of Warcraft. There's something for everyone.

While I do raid, there's a lot of solo content that I really feel proud of completing. At the top of my list is mastering the Shartuul's Transporter event. For quite awhile it would just stomp me into the ground, until one day I found my groove and was able to get through to the end. It took a handful of the Charged Crystal Focuses(foci?) for the 'special' abilities, but I did it. From there, I did the event as often as I could, until I could get through it without using any Foci. Now? Easy as pie. The event is basically free potions and potential epics for me now. Assuming it doesn't bug out. Spawn, you stupid eyeball! Spawn!

I've also been working on rep for a Wintersaber, but even after the buffs to reputation gains on that grind, I have a hard time staying interested. I've been doing it in little bit and pieces, and I really look forward to when I finally get a pink kitty.

So I'm curious, what are your solo accomplishments? That little(or big) thing you met head on and mastered on your own?

Patch 2.4 supplies a great amount of solo content along with the new 5-man dungeon and raid zone, but there is one thing that you should remember stepping onto the Isle of Quel'Danas: This content is not the same difficulty level as everything else we've done so far.

The dungeon and raid aren't the only things that have progressed the difficulty of the game, the solo content is more challenging as well. While the respawn rates on mobs may be turned down on the Live servers compared to what they are on the PTR, the fact remains that some of these baddies are not to be underestimated. Even the new bombing run is more difficult, though less likely to kill you than the others. When Ogri'la and Skettis were first released, they were a bit of a death trap. Most people went into them in a daze, expecting to nap through the little battles like the zones we had done before. The reality was, though, that it was quite a bit harder than that. Until we adjusted to the difficulty and played a little smarter, it was death city.

Quel'Danas is about the same. It isn't incredibly difficult, but it is a step up from what we've seen so far. Tread lightly, bring lots of bandages. If you're brand new to level 70 and your gear is... well, junk, then you might want to group with some friends for the new daily quests. And uh, don't be like me and go AFK in the middle of enemy territory and expect to come back 10 minutes later unharmed. That probably isn't going to go well for you.

With healers getting some soloing love in patch 2.3, Migol asked on the forums if something similar was going to happen for Warriors and Paladins who are speced Protection. Eyonix responded that they are in fact planning to make soloing easier for all non-DPS specs, including Prot Pallies and Warriors.

Eyonix went on to say that they don't want Protection speced players to have to carry around a second set of DPS gear in order to grind mobs more effectively. He says that while a high level DPS set may give the player an edge, the Prot specs should be able to solo in the gear they tank in.

It sounds like they are leaning toward doing something similar to what 2.3 introduces for healers. Since healers are getting free spell damage on all healing gear, will tanks get free attack power on all tanking gear?

Presumably, Druid tanks won't be sharing in this love since the Feral spec is a very powerful solo spec. So, if the changes are going to affect tanking gear, it will probably only apply to plate.

Eyonix does not give a time frame for Protection improvements other than "the future" and since it doesn't sound like they have a concrete plan yet, it probably won't be in patch 2.4.

What kind of improvements would you like to see for Protection soloing?