World of Warcraft

Ok, so since I have started writing, I have had a chance to play a total of about 9 hours of WoW. I have been on Hellfire Peninsula and have completed all of the quests there. I started extremely undergeared and underpowered. Jwink’s entire wardrobe has changed - which means that Blizzard makes it possible by supplying some decent gear as quest rewards right out of the gate (no pun intended).

Jwink is now level 62 with all of the above complete. I managed to get some footage of the level “ding” using some of the tactics that I have been writing about. Enjoy.

In my previous post, I spoke about how to protect yourself, but I also mentioned how to be annoying without being swatted - without getting aggro. The answer is the wand. It causes no significant one-time damage, but really adds up over time. It is also really great for reserving your mana for when you need to heal your group.

Using aggressive spells (ones that cost mana) in a group for a holy priest isn’t as neccessary as when you are soloing - so when the heals aren’t needed, bring out that stinger and let it fly.

Here is a video of Jwink supporting a Paladin and a Warrior in one of the group quests on Hellfire Penninsula;

First thing to understand is, if you can’t take care of yourself, you can’t effectively take care of others. Priests wear cloth, which is why we are titled “squishy”. We can’t take that much direct punishment without pushing up daisies, so you have to find a way to heal without being noticed, and how to be annoying without getting swatted (aka, getting aggro).

To restate my first sentence - You cannot heal if you are taking a pounding. Here are some pointers;

FADE! - This is a wonderful little spell that makes you look so inconspicuous that creatures go after other players. This is good. No group wants their healer to go down.

POWER WORD: SHIELD - This can usually absorb enough damage to let your Fade spell cooldown or keep the bad guy’s hits from interrupting your heals in time for the tank to come over and pull the monsters off of you.

PSYCHIC SCREAM - You have to be careful with this one. It is a last ditch effort because usually, when fighting in a group, you are fighting humanoids in a dungeon. If they run away in fear, they have the possibility of running into MOBS that haven’t noticed your presence and will bring them back with them to join the fight.

MIND CONTROL - If the rest of your group does not need healing at the moment, and a certain MOB is bugging you, take over his mind and have him kill his friends. Beware though, when he breaks your influence over his mind, he will come after you - and it is very difficult to get him off you unless you wax him.

As I continue to quest with my Holy Priest, Jwink, I find different ways to meet my quest objectives by approaching attack methods based on the enemy. So far I have talked about the Bubble Attack and the Fear Attack, which are both based off of fighting one individual enemy (MOB).

The Minion Attack is an attack that involves a mellee target with two or more mellee minions, or sidekicks. These minions usually have low hitpoints, but they pack a wallop. This particular example is against a MOB in the Pools of Aggonar called Blistering Rot. It has two small minion bubble creeps that really hurt and can interupt your casting if you dont take them out pronto. I have also seen these kinds of MOBs in earlier levels as sand creatures that spawn bug minions, this attack will take care of them as well.

View the video below; You can see I take the Bubble attack approach by igniting the MOB with Holy Fire, then casting Mind Blast, Shadow Word: Pain, and then the Power Word: Shield. After the shield is up, I pop the Holy Priest’s area of effect (AOE) instant spell “Holy Nova” twice. Two of these blasts finish off the minions before I have to worry about them taking down the shield, and then i can finish off the main target. enjoy.

I’ve been playing with different level strategies and keep finding different ways to conserve mana. In my previous post, “Jwink: Fighting in Outland”, I explained what I would like to coin “The Bubble Attack”. Bubble is good but it still manages to take more mana than the Fear attack - simply because Power Word: Shield costs more mana than Psychic Scream.

By casting Psychic Scream after your first three spells, you not only save about 300 mana, but your target takes off in an undetermined route. During this time, the Power Word:Pain spell is working, Holy Fire’s lingering DOT (damage over time) is eating away at him, and as long as you can keep him in front of you (yes, you may have to turn and face him) you can keep tagging your target with blast after blast until the Fear breaks.

Just so you know, The Fear Attack is good fun but is not guaranteed. Fear can be resisted by monsters - in which case, falling back to the Bubble Attack is handy. Also, if the moster is ambitious, he can run far far away, so far that he goes out of your casting range preventing you from dealing supplimental damage to your DOTs. In this case wait for the target to come back in range and hit him with your two fast spells; Smite and Mind Blast (in that order). Here is the casting order for a successful Fear Attack;

1. Holy Fire
2. Mind Blast
3. Shadow Word: Pain
4. Psychic Scream
5. Holy Fire
6. Mind Blast or Smite or Holy Fire
7. If there is anything left - WAND!

Typical Strategy vs. Green/Yellow mob
Start at max ranged distance and send your pet, while the pet is running towards the mob use Hunter’s Mark. Make sure that auto-growl is turned on and let the pet get 1 hit and 1 growl off. Now use Serpent Sting and start auto shotting. From here the strategy used depends on your build and gear, because I am in excellent gear I can’t go straight into max DPS (damage per second) or I will rip aggro right off my pet. If you are Survival or Beast Mastery (BM), let your pet get 1 or 2 more hits in and a growl (not quite necessary if your beast mastery) and proceed with arcane shot and then multi shot if the area is clear of un-aggrod mobs. If you have steady shot (lvl 64 ability), proceed with concussive shot and then steady shot. The fact that you dazed the target adds 175 extra damage to your steady shot, well worth it. Do a quick check of your pet’s health, considering the fight is still fairly early in, its health should still be above 80% or so. Against most green/yellow mobs don’t worry about using mend pet until 25-30% health. From here it depends on build, if you are marks this is a good time to setup for aimed shot. All builds proceed back through this rotation that I just discussing, obviously skipping Aimed Shot if you do not have it. It is only necessary to apply serpent once every 2 rounds, because the effect will still be in place after one cycle. Now I have a video to post of me using this strategy (and most of my cooldowns) against a named quest boss. At the beginning of the video you see me coming out of Feign Death (FD), this is because the boss was in the middle of some lava so I had to pull it out with an arcane shot rank 1. Once it reached the land I used FD, and sent my pet to get aggro. If you have any questions about my strategies or any other questions feel free to leave comments. I’ll answer any questions asked in a blog on Friday of each week. Enjoy the video and Happy Hunting!
P.S. The song is Bat Country by Avenged Sevenfold and I recorded using Fraps.

Ok, so I have been in Outland and have played a total time of 1.5 hours. During that time I managed to complete approximately 4 Body count quests and a handful of courier/gathering/drop quests. Just from completing those quests, I have replaced FOUR equipped items!
I replaced;

I went from looking like this; To This.

Coming through the portal was a pretty cool event for those who haven’t done it yet. As soon as you walk out of the portal and down the steps you come to a huge battle - The Pit Lord and his minions VS the Alliance and the Horde. I pick up a quest that takes me over to an alliance camp called Honor Hold.

POWER-LEVELING. Like I said in my intro, I don’t have alot of time to play - so I have to make it count. Jwink is fully rested, so I have plenty of double-xp to earn, making my efforts twice as fast. My grinding rule-of-thumb is to go after quests that involve a body count (e.g. Kill 8 orcs and 10 cows) - they are my favorite. Quests involving drops are ok because it keeps you killing (gaining xp). I do not like gathering quests. I will pick them up, but if I have to go out of my way to get them, I drop them (unless the reward is something I can REALLY use).

THE METHOD. One thing I promised was to show how an under-geared holy/disc priest can get the job done. I have included two videos below to show the action - here is the explanation;

1. Holy Fire
2. Mind Blast
3. Shadow Word: Pain
4. Power Word: Shield
5. Holy Fire
6. Holy Fire
7. If there is anything left - WAND!

Ok, so I have all of the uncompleted dungeon quests from Blacrock depths, spire, and dire maul still sitting in my quest log. First thing I do is go through and clean it out. I am sure that I am going to have my hands full with quests in Outland.

While I was 60, before The Burning Crusade (TBC), I managed to gain about 300 gold by completing quests and going after felcloth in Felwood. So I used 50 of that and bought my remaining Bag slots at the bank.

Since I am an enchanter, I disenchanted all of my gear that I had in my bank, stuff that I would use for Fire protection or Nature Protection. I also used all of my saved-up enchanting materials and got my enchanting skills up to 290.

My basic direction and purpose is to get as lean as I can before going through the gate. I have a good feeling that I am going to have a plethora of new items that I am either going to want to keep in the bank and or hand, and I don’t want my bags to be full!

So I hop on a flight to NetherGarde Keep, head south, and enter the Dark Portal!

If you are a working adult and love playing World of Warcraft, you should find my posts very helpful. I am a 30-year-old with a family and my own full-time business. I really enjoy playing WoW, but due to my schedule I play at very odd times, very short intervals, and don’t really get to do much structured raiding. This makes me your Average-Joe Gamer.

My name is Ryan Leo and I am going to document leveling from 60-70 with Jwink, a Holy/Discipline Human Priest – at the pace that my life schedule allows. Jwink is not an elite character (watch the attached movie and you will see!) so this journey will show how an under-geared, holy (that’s right, no shadow spec) priest can get the job done.

I think those in the same boat as me should either RSS this feed or bookmark this page, because I am going to throw a lot of content your way. I am also dedicated to documenting with video so check this site out often!

Here you will find valuable information on Player vs. Player (PVP) builds, combat, and tactics. Also we will provide information on the best builds and areas for leveling, and finally we will map new end-game raid content at 70. All of this will be done by me (Fulleclipse or Hunter Leo) and my partners who will introduce themselves later. Now that the expansion has arrived (TBC) the first priority for most of you is leveling so that you can start raiding or PVP with your guilds. This is also an opportunity for those who were under geared at 60 before TBC, to work hard and get into an excellent PVP or Raiding guild. This opportunity is given because the expansion greens and blues are more powerful than most previous epic raiding content! I know myself that I’ve replaced Rhok’Delar with a chain quest rare gun Hemet’s Elekk Gun , and that I’ve replaced my Lok’Delar with two rare quest items Shani’s Crysknife and . Joining me in this blogging in a few days will be a holy/balance priest who will document his trip from 60-70 so all of our readers will have valuable info on the fastest places to go to hit 70! Have fun and happy hunting!