Honestly, I went Northrend @ 68, partly because I simply couldn't stand more Outland AGAIN, and partly because everything is so much better. The drops, quest XP, kill XP, all massively better than outland. Enchants, etc just don't matter, you punch through everything like it's paper, you'll have little/no downtime if you're Blood/Unholy, and I think I pretty much soloed (as Blood) every group quest up until the middle of Dragonblight when I ran into a 5-man Frostwyrm. Frost Presence + Sta/tank gear + Bloodworms/Death Strike = win.
In terms of speed, I believe I went 68-70 in one play session of about 5-7 hours tops, solely in Borean.
I've found that if you went to Outlands at 58 you ran out of 'usable' quests and were behind the leveling curve. I firmly think that it is far better to be ahead of the zone in levels then behind. Leveling in Terrokar at 65 allows you to solo every little thing in that zone even before the 3.0.2 patch, ok the summoned bone dragon was a bit harder but doable in duo.
I don't have beta access so I don't know how quests in are Northrend if it is comparable to Outland in terms of numbers, quest hubs, amount of grinding per quest, etc. . .
Last night was pessimistic skydive in a foolish narcotic shell
I like the Death Chicken as well ~.~. I've spent my time waiting for the expansion with farming gold so I've got 130k waiting to be spent. I'm sure I can live without the extra 800g. :P
Not to mention I already bought all of the stuff I'll need before the escalation of prices we're seeing right now.
By the way, on the topic of levelling; what do you guys reckon: stay Outland to 70 (which is my bet) or go Northrend at 68 (I tried this one, granted with worse gear than I'll have on live due to enchants and elixirs, etc (I'll be making this DK on a almost seperate account, so can even use my main to power through some elite quests))
Like I said, my vote's on stay until 70.
I stayed till 70 on beta, but I don't know if that route is better, you can get a like 40 dps better weapon within 15 minutes in northrend, additionally I believe the majority of the mobs in the starting zones are level 69 and will be yellow to you at 68, where as the mobs in hellfire are mostly level 61 and are orange at 58. If the northrend server stability is bad it is a no brainer however.
If I had to choose one or the other I would probably say northrend, doing blade's edge, netherstorm, or smv is not cool. No matter when you get to northrend you will have a lot of mob competition until you finish dragonblight, and maybe even after if you are too slow.
I 100% think you should do wpl and some of epl before going to outlands.
The Northrend entry zones aren't going to clear out quickly. Not everyone will start playing the expansion at the same time, so there will be crowds in the starting zones for weeks. Considering you'll be ready to hit there within a day or two of release, you might as well just bite the bullet.
I didn't have any issue with killing mobs or questing speed going to Outland at 58 and Northrend at 68. Each one is a huge jump up in terms of quest and kill exp, not to mention quality of rewards. I did level 68-73 in Borean Tundra and Howling Fjord. The entry level mobs are yellow to you, and give you twice as much exp as the mobs in Outland. Combine that with the fact that the end-Outland zones are easier with flying mounts that you don't have yet, and the advantage of going to Northrend seems clear.
Orcs look particularly terrible on traditional drakes, that's my gripe.
Anyway, on to more productive topics... I was wondering if anyone still shared my view about Gargoyle not being an effective use of RP in a raiding environment for a deep unholy DK (specced something like 17/0/54). My major complaint is that there is no accurate way to model that damage... we know how much the bolts hit for, but the Gargoyle doesn't spam it... it randomly melees (for pathetic damage) or just sits there in the air.
Thoughts?
I assume raids are hard to find about now on the Beta servers but you could simply average the damage done over a sample of (more or less) 10 fights and have a rough estimate based on all of your stats, modifiers and total up-time per use. I think that would be easier than trying to guess the exact AI of the little guy.
We know how hard he hits based on AP so we could probably calculate how many casts happen on average per time unit.
As for my own calculations I've given him the benefit of the doubt and gave about a 1.5 second delay in between each cast. He still seems worth it but not by as much as he 'should' be.
I'm planning to do WPL to 60, then scour Outlands to 70 unless I just can't avoid blade's edge. That place sucked even the first time.
If that much higher dps weapon is so quick to get, a brief detour to do that one quest and then back over to Outland for 68-70 might be in order.
Why would you do 58-60 in Azeroth, or 68-70 in Outland? You won't run out of quests in either place, so I don't see why you should slow yourself down in Azeroth/Outland when you can just head up to the new zone and be done with it.
I've found that if you went to Outlands at 58 you ran out of 'usable' quests and were behind the leveling curve. I firmly think that it is far better to be ahead of the zone in levels then behind. Leveling in Terrokar at 65 allows you to solo every little thing in that zone even before the 3.0.2 patch, ok the summoned bone dragon was a bit harder but doable in duo.
I don't have beta access so I don't know how quests in are Northrend if it is comparable to Outland in terms of numbers, quest hubs, amount of grinding per quest, etc. . .
You will not be behind the leveling curve at all with the XP changes in the latest patch. Since the patch I leveled a paladin from 60-70 with no rested XP. Hellfire will easily get you from 60-63 if you do all the quests including the group ones. Even skipping around areas, I hate Terrokar and the last part of Zangermarsh I was easily 70 by the time I did the last few Stormspire quests.
Originally Posted by XI-
Step 1: Obtain Handgun
Step 2: Place in Mouth
Step 3: ?????????????
Step 4: Profit (this is for the rest of us).
Why would you do 58-60 in Azeroth, or 68-70 in Outland? You won't run out of quests in either place, so I don't see why you should slow yourself down in Azeroth/Outland when you can just head up to the new zone and be done with it.
I'm like a few others in that I prefer not to be on the lower cusp of a zone when leveling. I'm also pretty sure that doing 58-60 in WPL is faster than Outland if you've got the Argent Dawn turn ins banked. Close to 60k bonus experience after doing what, 30 minutes worth of questing to get a friendly rep?
I did some EPL quests at 58 but realized it was largely a waste of time compared to Hellfire. Even with some Hellfire mobs being level 61, a lot are in the 58-60 range. There's just way more xp to be gained in Outland. Also, with the increase in xp gain for 60-70, even if you feel like you're starting behind the curve going to Outland at 58, you'll catch up and surpass it with ease. Likewise, save yourself some time and head straight to Northrend at 68, unless you seriously don't care about saving time.
Additionally, I started out as Blood, but switched to Unholy halfway through Hellfire to give it a try. I can never go back to leveling without On a Pale Horse again. The ease of soloing a single mob as Blood pales in comparison to the travel time saved with OaPH. Not to mention that anything you can solo as Blood you can also solo as Unholy. And there's no more downtime as Unholy than as Blood. I soloed every group and elite quest in Terrokar and Nagrand as Unholy, with the exception of Durn and Ring of Blood, naturally. Those two can be done by a group of Death Knights with no need for a healer. Both specs are great for soloing, but Blood has nothing comparable to OaPH for shaving time off leveling.
Why would you do 58-60 in Azeroth, or 68-70 in Outland? You won't run out of quests in either place, so I don't see why you should slow yourself down in Azeroth/Outland when you can just head up to the new zone and be done with it.
Depending on population, it's sometimes just as efficient to level in azeroth instead of early outlands, because you steamroll everything even more in there, and while the mobs give like 40% xp, the quests give the same. As long as you know what you're doing, there's a good chance to do 58-60 in azeroth faster than in outlands, especially if you have a few things setup ahead of time, like a raf newb linked to your dk account or a lock parked in silithus to tp. If you hit 61 in azeroth, you can skip hellfire alltogether, which again depending on population on your server, might just be faster that way than fighting over fel orcs spawns and pvping 50% of the time in hellfire.
I'm like a few others in that I prefer not to be on the lower cusp of a zone when leveling. I'm also pretty sure that doing 58-60 in WPL is faster than Outland if you've got the Argent Dawn turn ins banked. Close to 60k bonus experience after doing what, 30 minutes worth of questing to get a friendly rep?
I understand where you're coming from, but here's a few points:
Death Knight soloing ability is so powerful that target mob level is not an issue. You're able to solo most, if not all, elite quests in Outland.
With ~600 XP per mob and 10k per quest, in 30 minutes, you've probably scored more than what the AD turn ins can offer.
The reduced XP curve really makes leveling so fast that the 'cusp' you speak of is irrelevant. You'll end up somewhere between 62 and 63 by doing the whole of Hellfire, from 58.
The same applies to Northrend. You'll get 1k per mob and 20k xp on average per quest, with the reduced xp requirements you'll reach 70 in a matter of hours.
I'd say the rep to 3k takes longer than 30 minutes, as such, see #2.
Originally Posted by Pyros
Depending on population, it's sometimes just as efficient to level in azeroth instead of early outlands, because you steamroll everything even more in there, and while the mobs give like 40% xp, the quests give the same. As long as you know what you're doing, there's a good chance to do 58-60 in azeroth faster than in outlands, especially if you have a few things setup ahead of time, like a raf newb linked to your dk account or a lock parked in silithus to tp. If you hit 61 in azeroth, you can skip hellfire alltogether, which again depending on population on your server, might just be faster that way than fighting over fel orcs spawns and pvping 50% of the time in hellfire.
From personal experience I wouldn't say they give exactly the same. Almost every Outland quest gives 10k+, while that's the maximum for your average EPL/Winterspring. Ok, that was a blunt generalisation, but again, from personal experience, that's what I remember. Just so, I find Hellfire quests being a lot better in terms of leveling: while the zone is bigger, the questing content early on is a lot more centralized and you'll spend less time traveling around than in Silithus / EPL / Winterspring (whichever zone you prefer that is).
I admit that my point has a flaw because I have never done 58-60 in Azeroth since Outland became available. I did level 57-58 in Azeroth (Winterspring) as a Death Knight in beta when the quests got you to 57 at best. As such, my view on Azeroth leveling is theoretical. I realise this might not be what you're looking for here, however, I still maintain that leveling in Outland is faster than Azeroth, based on what I said above.
That's one thing I love about this class. You actually have the option to pick your spec... you are entirely raid viable no matter what you chose. I believe that baring some massive imbalance, I will probably be playing as 2H unholy for the foreseeable future on my DK. Should I get bored, however, I could always try frost, blood or even a DW tri-spec.
I completely agree. Thats the beautiful thing. I occasionally go to the WorldofWarcraft.com Wrath forums and theres tons of posts still about "which spec is the best for tanking / dps / pvp?" etc. After reading so much on this forum, its pretty clear that all trees, and increasingly so over time, are become good DPS and tanking trees. At this point, it comes down basically to your preferred play style. Thats not something that every other class can say. I remember the day that all druids were forced resto... this isnt ever going to be like that. I feel much more free to play around with specs since all trees offer a new alternative to both tanking and dps.
I understand where you're coming from, but here's a few points:
Death Knight soloing ability is so powerful that target mob level is not an issue. You're able to solo most, if not all, elite quests in Outland.
With ~600 XP per mob and 10k per quest, in 30 minutes, you've probably scored more than what the AD turn ins can offer.
The reduced XP curve really makes leveling so fast that the 'cusp' you speak of is irrelevant. You'll end up somewhere between 62 and 63 by doing the whole of Hellfire, from 58.
The same applies to Northrend. You'll get 1k per mob and 20k xp on average per quest, with the reduced xp requirements you'll reach 70 in a matter of hours.
I'd say the rep to 3k takes longer than 30 minutes, as such, see #2.
I did WPL/EPL to 60 once on beta already and was pleased with it. The cauldron quests are very simple, very fast and it's a fun diversion to have things fall over dead before you know it. I've also spent time already collecting the various turn ins to supplement that xp more, so at this point I'm sorta committed.
I'm not looking to break any speed records, that's entirely out of the question. I'd just prefer to hit Outland at 60 than 58, having done it a few times and always preferred getting there at the correct level rather than the earliest.
I cannot concur enough with the point that "mob level is almost irrelevant". At 58, I was accidentally killing 60 elites in HFP, and my usual target of "things to kill" was +2 at a minimum, +3-4 on average.
Even in Outland, even against +2-3 mobs, things just evaporate. 58 is entirely, 100% viable for HFP as a DK. Not "you CAN do it", but "It's so easy you'd be silly not to". It honestly doesn't compare at all to taking a normal character there at 58.
I generally don't like to post unless I have something to add, but I had a question.
After the latest change went through, I'm showing Blood dps about 4% better than Unholy (ignoring CD and Ghoul for the moment).
There is a chance these numbers are wrong, but I'd like someone else's experience on the matter.
Additionally, did we ever figure out the scaling on Ghoul attack power and strength? I'd like to be able to include it in the next version of the spreadsheet.
I posted earlier in the thread an analysis of runic power generation. This post is a continuation of that.
(((# of abilities used)-2)*5)+40 = Runic Power per rotation
This equation works for untalented rotations. The lower bound of 40 corresponds to a DnD and AoD rotation. The upper bound of 60 corresponds to rotations using all 6 runes individually.
Example: DnD-IT-PS-BS gives you 20-10-10-10 = 50rp. Using the equation we have (((4)-2)*5)+40 = (10)+ 40 = 50.
For the purposes of further study I will assume a standard 10 second rune cooldown. The reason for this is first it makes the math easy, and second I believe the buffer code is intended to give us more flexibility from rotation to rotation and while still providing a fairly predictable runic power generation.
This means our untalented lower bound is 4 RP/s, and the upper bound is 6RP/s. (RP/s = Runic Power per Second)
Talents
There are four talents that effect runic power generation: Butchery, Scent of Blood, Chill of the Grave, Dirge.
Butchery gives us an additional .2/.4 RP/s, the secondary effect is hard to model for obvious reasons so I will ignore it for the time being because against raid bosses and even most arena environments this effect will be largely unimportant.
Scent of Blood gives us an additional .25/.5/.75 RP/s this is also hard to surely model since it has an cooldown and requires you to be hit, but for maximum study purposes we'll assume that it procs exactly every 20 seconds.
Dirge gives us an additional .5/1 RP/s. A way to view this and chill of the grave is that it gives you additional RP when you use Unholy and Frost runes respectively.
Chill of the Grave gives us an additional .5/1 RP/s. The only note here is that Death Strike is not included in this talent so a frost build using Death strike hampers it's RP generation.
Since all of these talents can be acquired in the same build we can generate an upper bound for RP/s with talents:
6+1+1+.75+.4= 9.15 RP/s
Death Runes can change the results from tree to tree and depending how they are used. However given that Death Runes can only be used in certain ways we can show that used appropriately they can still only generate an additional 1RP/s. Using this we can generate a greatest upper bound on RP/s:
6+1+1+1+.75+.4= 10.15 RP/s
Max RP/s for Tree centric talent builds without Death Runes:
Blood: 7.15 RP/s
Frost: 7 RP/s
Unholy: 7 RP/s
Max RP/s for Tree centric talent builds with Death Runes:
Blood: 7.15 RP/s
Frost: 8 RP/s
Unholy: 8 RP/s
Most rotations will fall into the 5.5 and 6.5 RP/s range.
Later I will use this information to analyze runic power generation and draining for DPS and Tank builds.
A. the mobs are orange at 58 in hellfire, which means you miss and get glancings, the mobs in wpl/epl have half the health, and do a quarter of the damage to you. They may only give 40% the experience but they are killed like 200% faster.
B. You actually get exp from quests faster in WPL. The cauldron quest line is 2.5k+8k per quest kill 3-4 mobs, the blight caller quest gives over 30k experience for not killing a single mob.
C. After you do the cauldron quests you will be friendly with argent dawn and you can hand in 30 fronds, scraps, cores for around 20k experience.
D. The same does not apply to northrend, northrend quests are far easier than outlands quests, and the mobs start equal level, and the quest item rewards are actually upgrades. When I checked my stats when I hit 80 the average northrend quest took less than 5 mob kills.
I am sure with the 4 turn in quests in light's hope I can just do the cauldron line, the dranei escort line, kill 8 wolves, kill 8 bears, the andorhal skeleton, tower, watch, and silo quests, pamela redpath's doll, and the blight caller line and be 60. If other dks are around I can even kill araj real quick for an extra boost. This lets me not only have a hp/kill speed advantage in outlands but get my second glyph equipped before heading to outlands.
You do not have to go out of your way to get the 3k AD rep, you get it all just for doing the WPL quests.
You literally get 80% of an outlands quest per quest, and the quests are done faster, the only quest that requires more than 8 mobs to be killed between both zones is the skeleton fragment quest and that can be done while you do the other 3 andorhal quests. I literally tested if wpl/epl was faster than outlands less than 48 hours ago.
I haven't tried this myself because I don't have beta access, but this guide claims that you can get 58-60 in about an hour with the EPL turn-ins and the cloth donations to each major faction.
Personally I've never been a fan of the Hellfire zone at all so I'll be trying out that guide anyhow.
And a question about soloing group quests: alot of people are saying you can solo them all pretty much, but does this go for 2-3 man quests, or 5-man as well?
For example, the Nesingwary quests in Nagrand. I could solo the elite ones on my warlock with a potion or whatnot, but what about this one for example? And I assume that Ring of Blood solo is pretty much impossible.
I have not been able to find an answer to this question--due to there being 139 pages.
Do diseases stack? And if so, do abilities such as SS benefit from multiple disease on that target?
TLDR: Yes, but only Frost Fever, Blood Plague, Crypt Fever/Ebon Plague Bringer, and only your own.
If you had read all 139 pages (and I don't mean to be mean about it), you would have come across a number of posts about UB and the change from it counting to it no longer counting. Also the subject came up a number of times about scaling. Diseases provide a flat bonus which does NOT scale with stats.
And a question about soloing group quests: alot of people are saying you can solo them all pretty much, but does this go for 2-3 man quests, or 5-man as well?
For example, the Nesingwary quests in Nagrand. I could solo the elite ones on my warlock with a potion or whatnot, but what about this one for example? And I assume that Ring of Blood solo is pretty much impossible.
Nesingwary ones were easy enough, even Tusker. Arazzius is a caster, and the adds were no trouble with proper aoe. The only thing I found unsoloable in the whole of Outland was Durn and Ring of Blood. I think we're digressing here though...
A. the mobs are orange at 58 in hellfire, which means you miss and get glancings, the mobs in wpl/epl have half the health, and do a quarter of the damage to you. They may only give 40% the experience but they are killed like 200% faster.
False. Mobs in Hellfire start at 58 EDIT: Actually, IIRC they start at 57. You can AOE down entire spawn points at a time as Unholy.
10/29/08, 5:24 PM
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