Saturday, September 5, 2009

What I'm Working On: Greenwiz (80 Gnome Mage, WoW)

It's Labor Day weekend in the US, and I've been meaning to do a bit of a rundown of what my characters are up to anyway, so here's part 1, focusing on Greenwiz, my level 80 gnome mage.



Greenwiz is my account's designated heirloom bread-winner. I've already purchased the Wintergrasp heirloom leather melee shoulders, both the Wintergrasp and the Heroism daggers, and the generic haste/HP regen trinket (which can be used by literally any character class). As you can see, I can afford quite a few more heirlooms.

If Wrath ended today, I would pick up the cloth and melee plate shoulders and the staff from Wintergrasp (75 shards left in the bank), along with the spell power trinket, the cloth robe, and, when I get 10 more emblems, the melee leather chest. I'm accumulating more of these things from content I'm doing anyway, so that list will get even longer before Cataclysm. Someone was saying something about how my low level alts will be screwed for leveling if I don't have guild heirlooms for them?

You'll note that I'm counting those numbers assuming that I will cash in all of my emblems for heroism heirlooms. For reasons I've already covered, I don't see the point of spending them on gear upgrades for Greenwiz. Many of the Conquest items would be replaced outright by drops from the new 5-man dungeon, and there's still Icecrown with even better loot ahead. Unless I really run out of heirlooms to buy, I don't see why I'd prefer a minor upgrade I don't need and will replace quickly over something that would stick with my account and help my pre-80 alts from now until when/if Blizzard brings the servers down.

Instead, Greenwiz is chasing down the 100 or so Champion's Seals he would need to get the pony (remote bank access for his squire minipet). Some of the new daily quests are fun, and I'm not in a hurry, so I can just skip the ones that aren't. If I pass that mark and still have more seals, I guess I'd use them for either mounts or even more heirlooms. Note that I'm not going to spend any of these tokens until we get very close to Cataclysm - there could always be more new items to buy in 3.3, and I might always change my mind on the emblem loot if I run out of heirlooms to buy.

In other news, I've re-betrayed the Frenzyheart to switch back to the Oracles and hope for the Green Proto-drake. I was actually able to solo the lich that you need to kill in order to make the switch, so I guess all the gear finally paid off for something. I run Wintergrasp once a week to complete some of the weekly quests, and I'm running heroic 5-mans when I'm able to clear out a block of time to do so.

Finally, I've respecced both of Greenwiz's slots to cookie cutter Arcane/Icy Veins and Fireball/TTW. The fire slot is for group content only, so there's less reason to care about the snare and mana efficiency for solo content that I used to have as Fire/Frost Frostfire. The Arcane side previously went into Fire for Impact, but they nerfed that talent (the buff isn't infinite anymore) and I felt like I'd rather have Icy Veins. It still isn't a cookie cutter build, as it includes some PVP goodies, but it will probably be a slight improvement for my 5-man DPS. (I generally run 5-mans as Arcane unless I'm really confident that the tank can handle my fire spec.)

It's a quiet semi-retirement of sorts, but not a bad one.

4 comments:

  1. The heirloom trinkets are not unique, so technically you can equip two of the HP ones if you want. May not be worth the effort of acquiring.

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  2. I've just started playing WoW again recently (you fire up LoTRO, I fire up WoW, and fire rains down from the heavens while the moon runs red with blood).

    Decided to delete a 62 gnome mage and start him over from scratch. He had nowhere near the cash needed for a flying mount, and the only thing that could possibly make going through BC content fun again to me is doing it from the air.

    I have to say, being a super low level untwinked mage is quite a bit more fun than most of my mid level characters. The game is just generally way too easy to be entertaining to me. However, on my new guy I've actually died a few times. It's refreshing.

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  3. Conquest gear would not be replaced in the new 5 man. Heroic ToC drops Ulduar 10 level gear. Conquest badges by Ulduar 25 level gear.

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  4. @Argon: Interesting. Not sure I'd bother with two of the haste ones, but a pair of the spell power ones would be pretty nice for caster alts.

    @Yeebo: Heh, you do really have to go looking for trouble if you want to find it in Azeroth these days. Ah well, it's fun anyway.

    @Darraxus: ilvl isn't everything. The Conquest badge loot is half a tier above HTOC (226 vs 219), but the Conquest badge loot (excluding the tier set) often spends its budget in deliberately sub-optimal ways to make room for better upgrades off of actual Ulduar bosses. Take a look at this comparison between the mage T8.5 helm and a drop off the Black Knight. Seven extra item levels don't help much if Blizzard insists on spending budget on spirit (which they won't be doing anymore after the expansion).

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