WhelpCamp'08

The Mounts and Pets Tab Feature is coming. I must prepare. As many essential camps as possible must be out of the way before WotLK goes live, because once that occurs I will be concerned with the leveling of 3 characters and I will not have time to sit on my ass in Burning Goat and pop lowbie trash in the hopes they'll cough up something cute.

I figured I'd start big and get cracking on one of the biggest Pain in the Ass Pet camps: whelplings. Whelplings come in four different varieties: black, green, blue, and red (or as I like to call them, Death, Pestilence, Famine, and War). The black, green, and red whelps all drop from level 23-43 mobs in equivalent zones, while the blue whelp drops from elite dragonkin in Azshara. Each whelp is a 1 in 1000 chance drop from its respective mob. Good times!

My first stop on the Whelp Train was the green whelp camp, in the aptly-named Swamp of Sorrows. The green camp is generally considered to be the worst out of the bunch, as there are a very small number of whelps available to kill and only about a third to a half of them are the actual mobs (Dreaming Whelps) that drop the whelpling pet. The rest of them (Adolescent Whelps) are potential placeholders for Dreaming Whelps, though, so you have to kill everything in the hopes that more potential whelp drops will spawn. It's inefficient and very, very, boring. There's downtime while you wait for respawns. There's nothing else that's fun to kill nearby. You're stuffed into a small corner of the zone away from everything with no company except for a batty night elf NPC in a cave nearby who won't talk to you. The zone's color scheme gives one the impression of being in a depressing 70's era apartment with avocado kitchen appliances, nasty brown shag carpeting, and an orange multi-print couch next to an album shelf containing nothing but the collected works of Zamfir, Master of the Pan-flute. If that isn't an excuse to drink heavily, I don't know what is.

Adding in some more fun to the mix is the fact that these whelps are also the target of a quest line in SoS, so every once in a while you have to deal with lowbies coming in who not only want to kill all the mobs you've been painstakingly trying to get to spawn for the past couple of hours, they can't understand why you're a little reluctant to back off and let them do it. I'm generally a very accommodating soul, and most of the time an amicable agreement can be reached, but I had two winners at life show up about an hour and a half into my time there and begin to gank as many spawns as they could get their greasy little meathooks on, then send me a tell saying how incredibly rude I was to not let them quest here. I apologized for not wearing my psychic pants (they had not given me so much as a "howdy, mind if we finish our quest" or anything) and offered them all the adolescent spawns if I could kill the dreaming spawns, as those are the only ones I'm interested in. They decided that wasn't a good option, put me on ignore, and continued to try to race me to any whelp that popped in the area.

Well. Once negotiations failed, I was faced with two options. Option one, back off and let them quest and eventually they will leave. Option two, go Jihad Mode and make them earn every single spawn for their retarded quest. I think we all know what I chose. Hey, it gave me at least a solid 30 minutes of high-octane entertainment until they decided to leave. I stuck around for a bit after that but the magic was gone. I called it quits at the green camp for the time being and headed somewhere else. Green whelp camp: marginally more fun than stabbing yourself in the eye.

During this time, through some judicious leverage on my part involving CCing a Shadow Labs group, I acquired a minion to help me camp the whelps. He went over to the blue whelp camp, and I decided to go down there and keep him company.

Compared to the green whelp camp, the blue whelp camp is like flying a winged unicorn around in a field of marshmallow flowers next to rivers of chocolate and honey, while a golden sun smiles down upon you and all is right and peaceful with the universe. Azshara gets top points for scenery in my books, and the mobs are elites so I don't have to worry about any lowbies cramping my style. It seemed like a very pleasant camp overall, so I was all ready to hunker down and have some nice few hours of farming in a place that didn't blow goat balls. Natch, I get the blue whelpling drop after about 5 kills. Oh well. Onward to the red camp!

Overall, red camp isn't that bad. There's TONS of little whelps flapping all over the place so there's zero downtime if you just pick a spot and run around in a big circle killing everything you see. Two people can easily share the camp and the mobs are very low level (mid-20's) so they die fast. Anyone who tells you Lost Whelps are placeholders for the other whelps, though, is a big fat Lying McLiarson. Lost Whelps always spawn Lost Whelps and they do not drop a whelp pet, so don't waste your time with them. Terminate everything else with extreme prejudice.

(Side note: after about 3 hours at red whelp camp, I really began to wish my character had skinning skill.)

Eventually my minion and I decided that greater efficiency would be had if we split our time at the various camps, so he stayed at red camp and I headed over to Badlands to see a Scalding Whelp about a whelp. The black whelp camp has its pros and cons. Pro: no other mobs in the area except for whelps, and no irritating placeholders. Cons: the camp is split into two equal-sized sections by a large area with big black drakes flying around in it so there's some time lost riding back and forth between the two locales. Also, the scenery is boring. However, there is mithril. If you're a miner, you can make some decent bank off selling the mithril you find while doing this camp. While it's not my top choice for camping, it could always be worse, like the green camp. I don't think I can express how much of a festering pile of dog stink the green whelp camp is.

While doing the black whelp camp, I also got this as a drop, which while definitely NOT a whelp, was certainly appreciated nonetheless. You'll be killing enough crap running through the WhelpamaPhoneaThon that you'll probably get at least one world-drop blue item if not an epic at some point. Once I hunkered down at black camp, it took probably about 3 solid days of 2-3 hours invested each day before the black whelp dropped for me. My minion, meanwhile, was still dutifully camping the red whelps. That meant the only thing left for me was heading over to the still-aptly-named Swamp of Sorrows (preferably with a large bottle of cheap red wine) and getting back to the ugly grind. Bleh.

I consider it the purest form of karmic reward that I returned to that godforsaken pit of a zone, killed 2 whelps and got the drop. Maybe there is a a Higher Power in this world, after all. The next day while we were raiding, a guildmate hand-delivered me a shiny new red whelpling, courtesy of my camp-minion, who had also gotten lucky the other day. My whelp collection complete after only a week and a half of solid work! I consider that to be "not too shabby."

Of course, this means I need to pick a new soul-breakingly long activity to finish. I'm currently debating either the Disgusting Oozeling Camp, or the Wintersaber Mount Grind. Judging by the horror stories I've heard from each, both sound like they sit at about roughly the same location on the Crappy Camp Scale, but at least the mount is a guaranteed thing after the time invested.

Zhevras and Dragons, oh my!

I usually treat Blizzard as though they were a slightly-retarded puppy dog. Yes you can get angry with them for piddling on the couch and running repeatedly head-first into the wall, but in the end they don't really know better.

Then there are moments where I wonder, is Blizzard really as stupid as they seem? The Zhevra mount hoopla being one of those moments. When I first heard that a zhevra mount option was in the game, just not implemented yet, I was jazzed. JAZZED. My all-time favorite animal is a zebra, and the only reason I busted my ass for Kurenai faction was 'cause the white talbuk had a stripey butt so it was sort of like a zebra. Blizzard, you had me at "hello."

So long story short, I was essentially prepared to do whatever it took to get this mount once it went live. I had no idea what they were planning. I was expecting some typical faction grinding, possibly Ratchet faction, or maybe have it be a drop out of Zul'Aman to replace the bear mount come WotLK. I was not expecting them to add it on as a bonus to their Refer-a-Friend program, which meant that in order for me to fulfill my deep zhevra desires, not only do I have to find a friend who wants to play WoW and refer them, said friend has to like it enough to upgrade and pay for a full account for at least two months. Either that, or I refer myself to myself (hi, self!) and buy a second account to upgrade for two months.

Blizzard, you bastards. You brilliant money-grubbing bastards. Yes, I did it. You knew I would. You know I have a sickness and you're exploiting it mercilessly. If I weren't already in a fulfilling relationship I'd be incredibly aroused right now.

In other news, to commemorate the Olympic games in Beijing, Blizz has implemented a new tabard and pet that can be gained through participating in battlegrounds for the duration of the games. The tabard is easy enough; all you have to do is be in a battleground and it gets mailed to you afterwards. The pet, a little yellow Chinese dragon, isn't quite as simple. First of all, you have to participate in a battleground, secondly, you have to WIN the battleground, and third, if you do manage to win, it's still only like a 7-10% chance you'll get a dragon pet in the mail. Now, I don't know how things are on other peoples' servers, but here on Medivh being Alliance pretty much dooms you to a life of disjointed ADHD pvp with a pack of brain-damaged puggers whose primary response to "hey LM needs backup, 3 horde inc" is "lawl." Who think capping stables and going AFK is sheer tactical mastery. Winning is HARD. Winning doesn't always happen. It used to be that AV, which once relied on the Power of the Zerg Rush (something Alliance was brilliant at) was our one win guarantee. Then the Horde started with all that pre-form stuff (I still cannot believe they get 40 people from ONE server together for the sole reason of turtling at IBGY) and AV became naught but sorrow and tears and 10 minutes of hurling yourself at a wall if you can't stealth. Wonderful. I lucked out; I entered an AB and found myself in the midst of a group of highly-motivated Alliance pre-formers who four-capped some extremely confused Horde and I got my dragon in the mail after that. (As I understand, pigs also gained Flight Form that day.) I don't predict this pet being too common on Alliance side. Just a hunch.

Pimp my Ride

In the WotLK expansion Blizzard has said it will be implementing a new method of carrying mounts/pets which will set them up into a dropdown menu-thingy and they will no longer be taking up precious precious bag space. This is probably the single biggest reason I will be buying the expansion. You might find that a little odd, but I carry at any given time 3-4 mounts and 5 vanity pets. That adds up, and in addition to all the raiding sets/trinkets/mariachi outfits/offhand fish/voodoo skulls I tote around on any given day, I'm usually pretty lucky to have 1 empty bag to farm with.

Incidentally, this simple announcement is probably the most brilliant idea Blizzard has ever had for a money-sink in this game, because now people like me will be buying 1 talbuk of every color to complete their collections. We have a sickness, and previously the only thing keeping it from turning into a full-blown addiction on the level of Pokemon obsession was the problems with bag space. Now I can fully indulge my desire for a talbuk ranch or a rainbow collection of nether rays. A drake for every day of the week? Why not! Tuesdays are blue days. I'll finally go back to Burning Ass or Searing Goat or whatever godforsaken zone had those little pet quests in it for the worg pup or spider thing and finish them. Sprite darters for all my alts!

Yes, I play this game for the fashion. I mean, I play for other reasons too...like raiding new content, or seeing how many offhand fish I can collect. Especially the offhand fish. But really at the end of the day it comes down to how does my digital barbie doll look? I can't tell you how incredibly pleased I was when I discovered not only does the new nether ray fry pet match my T6 outfit, but that the nether ray mount I have is same color as the pet. I am SO MATCHY MATCHY IT HURTS. Rollin down the street, sippin on conjured juice...laid back. Got my mind on my gold and my gold on my mind. Straight-pimpin'.

Speaking of straight-pimping, I finally joined the ranks of the Bear Cavalry last week during our latest ZA run. I named him Escalade, and he joins Sammy the Talbuk and Edgar the Mistsaber in my regular mount rotation. I'm proud of the bear mount, but my real pride and joy is Edgar. I got him back before TBC, before you could go to the draenei newbie zone and make nice with elves all the way into honored before you even hit level 18. I did it the hard way, starting in Darnassus (which as a mage, is not quite the smartest thing to do as there is NO mage trainer) and leveling in only elven zones so I wouldn't miss a single point of faction, then stuffing a crapload of runecloth into the quest guy to make those last few thousand points out of revered into exalted. Of course, not a month after me going through all this, Blizzard implemented a battle-cat PVP mount that was 10 million times easier to get, but c'est la vie. At least Sammy was a little simpler. Kurenai are whores for beads.

(On a side note, I found it more than a little amusing that Blizzard puts in this tribal society and then makes the major way of building good will with them a bead quest. Why not go all the way and put disease-filled blankets and fire-water in too while you're at it?)

My latest indulgence is building Theme Sets with outfits and pets. The mariachi outfit was easy, since the hat summons a big-ass wolf that's completely awesome. My summer flame theme took a little more work, because I had to collect a metric crapload of blossoms to buy the robe and pet and then complete the fire-stealing quests in all the major Horde cities to get the crown. Let me tell you, there is nothing quite so exhilarating as sneaking around a corner in Orgrimmar and running into a pack of warlocks from the top Horde progression guild just chilling out by the flightmaster, who then proceed to SERPRISE BUTTSECKS you for a solid 10 mins or so and would have camped your corpse several more times if you hadn't managed to get a ninja-portal off before they found you rezzed inside a hut nearby. Good times!

WotLK Mage Talents (as of 7/28)

The mage deep fire tree is looking pretty meh. The new talents seem like Blizz wants to take fire down some strange pvp-viable route with more AE ability and and burst potential, and I don't really see anything that looks critical (Get it? Critical?!? I'm so lame.) for pve raiding, except Burnout and possibly Hot Streak. Honestly I don't even consider those talents critical for raiding. I just like to make cheap puns. These are some pretty mediocre additions to a tree that's supposed to be the high-damage raiding tree.

I poo-poo'd this talent outright upon intitial inspection but then I noticed that the percentage of mana lost upon critical doesn't change from 1% as you move up in ranks from 5% spell crit bonus at rank 1 to 25% spell crit bonus at rank 5. My first impression is this has to be a mistake and will get nerfed, but we'll see. Also the icon looks like a man with either serious Chili Breath or a flaming tapeworm trying to make its way down into his gullet. Does the icon give anyone else a vague uncomfortable feeling? It's a bit disturbing. Anyways...if this talent doesn't get nerfed into the ground it might be one of the few reasons that I can see for a pve mage to spec deeper into fire. Couple this with Hot Streak (100% spell critical chance after landing 3 crits in a row) and a boomkin and you might be cooking with gas.

I've always felt arcane tree to be the Party Tree of the mage specs. It's one of those trees where it's got some fun bells and whistles but I view it as more of an enhancing tree for the fire or frost trees than a standalone tree. Deep arcane to me is the equivalent of majoring in Classical Studies. You can read and write ancient Greek and wax poetic on Euripides's breakfast food choices impacting the nature of tragedy as we know it today, which makes you way cool at parties but not tremendously viable in other facets of life.* Better off minoring in that business and using it to enhance your business degree, nahmean Sparky?

That being said, arcane may be candy but there's some nice candy in there, and pretty early on at that. The only talent that's deep in arcane that I wish were a little higher up in the tree is Netherwind Presence with its 6% boost to haste. My suspicions are that Blizz wants to move arcane away from the HAY GUYZ WATCH ME SPAM TEH ARCANE BLAST PEW PEW PEW PEW WARES MAI SP ZOMG BACK TO FROSTBOLT LOLLERZ spec it has essentially become, and instead make it something that could actually require thought and rotations of other arcane spells. They've put in some sneaky AM-enhancing talents such as Netherwind Presence and added a spirit-boosting talent pretty early up in the tree, as well as an enhanced range effect to Magic Attunement. Magic Absorption looks beastly good now, and I like the decoupling of Arcane Meditation from Arcane Concentration; as a elemental major spec I don't generally need the clearcasting talents. I am quite pleased with the alteration of Arcane Impact to Spell Impact and allowing it to enhance critical chances on spells like Blast Wave, Ice Lance, and Fireblast instead of just Arcane Blast. As a matter of fact the early arcane talents got a nice little spruce-up, imo, which makes them all the more viable for using as an enhancement tree, particularly since there's so little that's worthwhile to go for in the deep fire tree. Don't be afraid to follow the old arcane candyman into his white van come WotLK.

And now, frost. My first impression of the new frost tree talents is "holy shit, can I raid with that?" Frost is still tops in control and survivability, which will always make it a very attractive pvp spec. However, there are some additions in the tree that I consider to be extremely viable for pve raiding, such as Improved Water Elemental. Point for point, the water elemental is the single biggest bang for your damage buck that a mage can talent into. Improving Evian's raid survivability and longevity will do more to enhance the damage a frost build can put out than any other talent. Other nice little additions include Winter's Grasp, which not only allows a frost mage to deliver icelance/shatter combos on raid-level bosses, but increases the chance to hit raid-wide by 2%. I'm almost afraid to talk about the potentially, completely, truly, disgustingly sickly ways this talent could be abused for as I really don't want Blizzard to nerf it. So I'll just say well done Blizz, keep up the good work, and don't touch a single goddamn thing in the frost tree (please). Bravo!

*Note: my sister is a Classics major and she's currently gainfully employed and making more money than I am. There are exceptions to every rule, which I hope also keeps deep-arcane-loving mages (and my sister) from burning me in effigy. My sister is additionally (and not surprisingly) way way way cool at parties.

Biscuit Bitch, or Maging in SWP

Ah, Sunwell Plateau. The pinnacle of raid progression. The end-game goal of every hardcore raider out there. The creamy filling of the WoW raid twinkie.

I admit I was tremendously excited about this zone going live. Our guild had just downed Illidan and it was a heady feeling being in a position to experience bleeding-edge raid content at the precise time it was meant to be experienced. Juicy!

After spending a fairly appreciable amount of time raiding Sunwell Plateau, I'd like to express my feelings in the form of haiku, tentatively titled "No mages needed in Sunwell."

Hey! Freebie int buff
Biscuit table at zone line
Warlocks, fear that mob

It is truly bordering on the comical how hard Blizzard has worked to phase the mage class out of high-end raiding. Our raid synergy is nearly non-existent. Our dps can be matched and easily beaten by warlocks. You could argue Kalecgos for decursing, but if you didn't have mages, there are other classes who can decurse. Mages have been reduced to a class where you bring one for scorch to make the fire locks happy, CC the trash, hoover up the excess Vanquisher drops, and portal out the people who need to respec mid-raid. Our DPS is secondary. Secondary. There is a zone-wide int and stamina buff that overwrites Arcane Brilliance, but does not overwrite Fortitude. If that's not a swift kick in the magenuts, I don't know what else is. I do not enjoy the feeling of having my beloved class treated thus. Once we were MIGHTY. We pew-pewed with wild abandon and produced jaw-dropping damage and topped the dps charts and epeened ourselves because we were MAGES, DAMMIT and yeah we sheeped some stuff too but we were really there for DOING BIG DAMAGE MWAHAHAHA! Mmm, damage.

It bothers me that I have to bust my absolute digital balls off in terms of consumables, cooldown management, and group synergies in order to even match a warlock's standard dps. If they've got the same advantages I do, forget about it. This is not the fault of the individual mage. It is a simple factor of game mechanics and until some things change or get tweaked, that's the way it's going to stay in Sunwell, at least. My raiding guild has gone down to 1 mage per raid being "optimal." If there's more than that, the other is along merely as filler, not because they're a mage. If there was some way warlocks got sheepcoil and summon biscuits, I bet we'd go down to no mages a night.

That being said, I do like Sunwell. I enjoy the challenging aspect of the fights and I like the idiot-check nature of the zone. Rule Number One of raiding: Respect the Zone. The minute you stop respecting the zone, the zone eats your face. I have seen this hold true in everything from Sunwell to Karazhan, regardless of gear level. Sunwell is a really steep learning curve. It will eat your face the second you drop focus. I like that. What I don't like is feeling like a second-class citizen on raids in Sunwell. Oh Sunwell, why must you be such a cruel, yet seductive mistress?