After Cataclysm's confirmation at Blizzcon 2009, I froze all leveling on characters under 58. This project will resume as soon as I have time for alt leveling come December.
And post-mop, obviously, this is no longer possible.
Friday, November 12, 2010
Monday, August 17, 2009
Level 20: Mounts? In my rogue?
It's more likely than you think!
I suppose this is my venue to discuss the last 20 levels in detail. Generally, my opinion is "Ugggggggghhhhhh."
(1) The rogue class itself seems to be extremely difficult to level, at least at this point. Only so much of the frustration can be attributed to leveling without stealth. Then again, hunter is similarly headdeskingly annoying from one to ten. On one hand, I have hope that it will get easier. Most classes, I think, have a noticeably more fluid leveling process after 30 or so, and certainly after 60. On the other, larger, more developed hand, I know one, very vocal person who lives, breathes, and eats rogue, who says that leveling one is akin to being slowly scalped and then laughed at after the process is over for thinking it was painful. This, of course, is not to mention THAT I HAVE NOT TRAINED STEALTH.
(2) Stealth would be really great right about now. While I am in the process of leveling a feral druid (ding, level 50), that character is being leveled in tandem with another druid. We are much more likely to brute force a quest than stealth to the goal. (As a side note, this druid and its crazy damage output makes me ache to think that rogue is very similar for other people.) This is my one opportunity, as I don't see myself releveling a class for any reason, to play a rogue and experience its widely hailed quest skipping ability. Although, one could argue, that this is also my one opportunity to level a class without the fundamentals of what comprises it.
(3) What happened to the 19-20 transition? Within the last month, I have leveled three characters, with slightly different routes, and all ended at 19 with nothing but orange and red quests. I suppose it's a hiccup of my previous leveling process not meshing with increased experience gains. Whatever it is, it makes that last level very unpleasant.
(4) My home is a very, very high population server. I could write my senior thesis on its twisted, jaded culture that has formed from the combination of hatred and mild distrust, but I digress! Instances are always full and even at 80, any time but early morning requires some time wiping to the door boss. I was looking forward to the gear and questions that would come from the WC group I managed to scrape together, but after over 45 minutes of trying, the group fell apart.
tl;dr: Waaaah, this is hard! BRB when the rogue is 30.
I suppose this is my venue to discuss the last 20 levels in detail. Generally, my opinion is "Ugggggggghhhhhh."
(1) The rogue class itself seems to be extremely difficult to level, at least at this point. Only so much of the frustration can be attributed to leveling without stealth. Then again, hunter is similarly headdeskingly annoying from one to ten. On one hand, I have hope that it will get easier. Most classes, I think, have a noticeably more fluid leveling process after 30 or so, and certainly after 60. On the other, larger, more developed hand, I know one, very vocal person who lives, breathes, and eats rogue, who says that leveling one is akin to being slowly scalped and then laughed at after the process is over for thinking it was painful. This, of course, is not to mention THAT I HAVE NOT TRAINED STEALTH.
(2) Stealth would be really great right about now. While I am in the process of leveling a feral druid (ding, level 50), that character is being leveled in tandem with another druid. We are much more likely to brute force a quest than stealth to the goal. (As a side note, this druid and its crazy damage output makes me ache to think that rogue is very similar for other people.) This is my one opportunity, as I don't see myself releveling a class for any reason, to play a rogue and experience its widely hailed quest skipping ability. Although, one could argue, that this is also my one opportunity to level a class without the fundamentals of what comprises it.
(3) What happened to the 19-20 transition? Within the last month, I have leveled three characters, with slightly different routes, and all ended at 19 with nothing but orange and red quests. I suppose it's a hiccup of my previous leveling process not meshing with increased experience gains. Whatever it is, it makes that last level very unpleasant.
(4) My home is a very, very high population server. I could write my senior thesis on its twisted, jaded culture that has formed from the combination of hatred and mild distrust, but I digress! Instances are always full and even at 80, any time but early morning requires some time wiping to the door boss. I was looking forward to the gear and questions that would come from the WC group I managed to scrape together, but after over 45 minutes of trying, the group fell apart.
tl;dr: Waaaah, this is hard! BRB when the rogue is 30.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Of BoAs and Men
It seems that I am at an impasse.
Having experienced an incredible, mind-blowing eight levels, I am concluding that the leveling process is not enjoyable. I am faced with the overwhelming community view of rogues being a faceroll leveling class and the reality of me barely being able to outlive a mob. Two is out of the question.
This is not a declaration of my sucking at the fine, noble, and notoriously easy class. This is my acknowledgment that leveling without stealth is not simple. It is not faceroll. It is not bathroom break compatible.
I'm moving away from the subject. The real situation here is that I recently acquired the leather BoA chest on top of the matching shoulders I already owned. These items were purchased with the express intent of leveling my 40-something druid post-3.2. However, they are rogue pieces as well and my poor rogue, already lacking the fundamentals of what composes her class, could use a little love.
But is it cheating in this endeavor? Is quickening the leveling process through outside means cheating? For instance runs and any other type of cross-account help, I've decided, yes. This is only my opinion, but it's a simple conclusion at which to arrive ("This is the kind of arrant pedantry up with which I will not put"). Partaking in boosting or what have you is a natural part of making alts. While leveling your first character, you make friends and obtain the resources to persuade others. Here, however, I think that I would not be really achieving anything by using what I have obtained on my main to pad the leveling experience of this rogue, in the respect of outside help. Should I apply this also to gear, especially when it will greatly increase my leveling speed? Well, increase my leveling speed by 20%, more or less? At this point, I have not transferred any gold to this character either. Should I continue this and play this character as the lonely, deprived character that she is, without home, companionship, or a fairly well-to-do benefactor?
This sad, sad Forsaken woman...
Having experienced an incredible, mind-blowing eight levels, I am concluding that the leveling process is not enjoyable. I am faced with the overwhelming community view of rogues being a faceroll leveling class and the reality of me barely being able to outlive a mob. Two is out of the question.
This is not a declaration of my sucking at the fine, noble, and notoriously easy class. This is my acknowledgment that leveling without stealth is not simple. It is not faceroll. It is not bathroom break compatible.
I'm moving away from the subject. The real situation here is that I recently acquired the leather BoA chest on top of the matching shoulders I already owned. These items were purchased with the express intent of leveling my 40-something druid post-3.2. However, they are rogue pieces as well and my poor rogue, already lacking the fundamentals of what composes her class, could use a little love.
But is it cheating in this endeavor? Is quickening the leveling process through outside means cheating? For instance runs and any other type of cross-account help, I've decided, yes. This is only my opinion, but it's a simple conclusion at which to arrive ("This is the kind of arrant pedantry up with which I will not put"). Partaking in boosting or what have you is a natural part of making alts. While leveling your first character, you make friends and obtain the resources to persuade others. Here, however, I think that I would not be really achieving anything by using what I have obtained on my main to pad the leveling experience of this rogue, in the respect of outside help. Should I apply this also to gear, especially when it will greatly increase my leveling speed? Well, increase my leveling speed by 20%, more or less? At this point, I have not transferred any gold to this character either. Should I continue this and play this character as the lonely, deprived character that she is, without home, companionship, or a fairly well-to-do benefactor?
This sad, sad Forsaken woman...
Sunday, August 9, 2009
The Rules
1. Do not talk about leveling without stealth.
2. Do NOT talk about leveling without stealth. (This is easy right now, as I do not have Sap or any other important mechanic that makes stealth necessary. A backstab at the beginning of combat is somewhat easy to accomplish on even hostile mobs. I will still be avoiding instances and groups.)
3. Training skills that require stealth is okay! (I figure I'm going to misclick eventually and train them anyway. They will serve as a taunting reminder of my undertaking every time I peruse my spellbook.)
4. Training stealth is NOT okay. (If I misclick and train it, I'll start over. Or stop playing WoW forever. One of those.)
5. No grinding! (Rogues are not particularly suited to this role anyway.)
6. No boosting, no help, no nothing! (Anyone can /follow a 80 and go AFK while the experience piles up. I will not rewrite that sentence not to end with a preposition.)
In short, I plan to follow my usual questing strategy and avoid instances and outside help. This is going to be fun! Right, guys? Right!
2. Do NOT talk about leveling without stealth. (This is easy right now, as I do not have Sap or any other important mechanic that makes stealth necessary. A backstab at the beginning of combat is somewhat easy to accomplish on even hostile mobs. I will still be avoiding instances and groups.)
3. Training skills that require stealth is okay! (I figure I'm going to misclick eventually and train them anyway. They will serve as a taunting reminder of my undertaking every time I peruse my spellbook.)
4. Training stealth is NOT okay. (If I misclick and train it, I'll start over. Or stop playing WoW forever. One of those.)
5. No grinding! (Rogues are not particularly suited to this role anyway.)
6. No boosting, no help, no nothing! (Anyone can /follow a 80 and go AFK while the experience piles up. I will not rewrite that sentence not to end with a preposition.)
In short, I plan to follow my usual questing strategy and avoid instances and outside help. This is going to be fun! Right, guys? Right!
Saturday, August 8, 2009
So it begins...
"Rogues would be nothing without stealth."
Oh really?
Backstory time!
Once upon a time, probably a year or two ago, my boyfriend and I were discussing that age old question: "What happens when a rogue tries to Vanish without having trained Stealth?"
Vanish, as we know, does the following:
Vanish is an interesting, if broken, ability that, if it worked correctly, would remove the rogue from combat (or at least reset the mobs in a PVE situation) and enter stealth with a higher stealth level (370+ stealth, effectively making your level for stealth detection purposes 117 at level 80) than the rogue would normally have. Of course, this does not happen "when you breathe on the rogue funny".
For purposes of the hypothetical question though, we can assume that Vanish managed to work properly. What would happen if the rogue had no ability to stealth? Would Vanish not work for a new reason? Would the stealth-free rogue become stealthed for those precious ten seconds? WOULD THE WHOLE WORLD RIP APART AT ITS SEAMS?
On a whim, I made a rogue, one of the few classes I had not started to level, and started leveling, forgoing spending the 10c on training Stealth. Around level 6, I stumbled on a thread in which someone pointed out that training Vanish required Stealth, a anticlimactic explanation to what I assumed would be game breaking.
I dropped my rogue and moved on with my Warcraftian career, figuring that I would return to it someday.
THAT DAY, GOOD SIR, IS TODAY.
Today, this young master of the subtle art of assassination awakes from her once thought to be eternal slumber, not a slack-jawed human but a jaded member of the dark and powerful Forsaken! Consumed by revenge for the eternal damnation unwillingly bestowed upon her—
This is going to be a long grind.
Oh really?
Backstory time!
Once upon a time, probably a year or two ago, my boyfriend and I were discussing that age old question: "What happens when a rogue tries to Vanish without having trained Stealth?"
Vanish, as we know, does the following:
Allows the rogue to vanish from sight, entering an improved stealth mode for 10 sec. Also breaks movement impairing effects.Rogues clearly have the most articulate of spell descriptions. For example, compare that to the tooltip of Fire Elemental Totem or Bestial Wrath.
Vanish is an interesting, if broken, ability that, if it worked correctly, would remove the rogue from combat (or at least reset the mobs in a PVE situation) and enter stealth with a higher stealth level (370+ stealth, effectively making your level for stealth detection purposes 117 at level 80) than the rogue would normally have. Of course, this does not happen "when you breathe on the rogue funny".
For purposes of the hypothetical question though, we can assume that Vanish managed to work properly. What would happen if the rogue had no ability to stealth? Would Vanish not work for a new reason? Would the stealth-free rogue become stealthed for those precious ten seconds? WOULD THE WHOLE WORLD RIP APART AT ITS SEAMS?
On a whim, I made a rogue, one of the few classes I had not started to level, and started leveling, forgoing spending the 10c on training Stealth. Around level 6, I stumbled on a thread in which someone pointed out that training Vanish required Stealth, a anticlimactic explanation to what I assumed would be game breaking.
I dropped my rogue and moved on with my Warcraftian career, figuring that I would return to it someday.
THAT DAY, GOOD SIR, IS TODAY.
Today, this young master of the subtle art of assassination awakes from her once thought to be eternal slumber, not a slack-jawed human but a jaded member of the dark and powerful Forsaken! Consumed by revenge for the eternal damnation unwillingly bestowed upon her—
This is going to be a long grind.
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