Monday, September 3, 2007

Gearing up

I finally first arrived in Nagrand a few days ago. It's probably the most atmospherically beautiful location I've been to in WoW yet, and I love the dynamic nature of it as well, in terms of Halaa being able to be taken by either the Horde or Alliance, and the fact that with most of the other settlements there, you seem to need to build rep with the faction in question in order to be able to use them as well. The moneymaking potential also is amazing; I could be wrong, but in 3-4 hours' questing I seem to have made close to 60 gold, which was due to vendor trash, quest rewards, and greens. The motes and primals are worth a lot of money too, it seems.

I'm currently chasing some gear which will hopefully set me up reasonably well for at least the initial period after I hit 70. I was initially motivated to visit Nagrand in part by my discovery in the forums of this gun, which has about another 2 base DPS more than my current one, the Gunblade. It might not seem like much, but it's about the best weapon I've been able to track down so far, outside an instance. I know the raid drops provide better, but this will probably be about the best I can get until then.

Those are only primary or instance weapons, mind you. For a farming/questing weapon, I've actually been using this, with initially Blackflight Arrows, and then Halaani Razorshafts. This might seem like a weird choice, but the point is that because the max damage range is about half as much as my gun, I don't get big crits, so while farming it's a lot easier for my boar to hold aggro. With the gun the crits give me aggro spikes all over the place, and it gets very hard to drop aggro back to the boar.

After my quiver's haste bonus, I get a 1.5 sec attack speed with the bow. That means I have to very much be on my toes with the rotation, but making it is still very possible if I'm paying attention. My latency was under 400 ms most of the time this morning at least, too...so that helped. According to Recount, going flat stick I can still get 200 DPS with it, as well...which seems to be more than enough for mowing down Nagrand's wildlife.

I also saw the Eaglehorn Long Bow on the AH earlier. I'm hoping it will still be there tomorrow, since I'm too tired to finish grinding for the money for it now. As a questing/farming weapon, that would be a even better, since although the DPS is 40, (hence mobs would die faster) the damage range is still nice and low, so crits wouldn't be a problem.

The other piece of gear I'm saving for at the moment is another Blade of Unquenched Thirst to go with the one I've already got. Once I've got the pair, I'm planning to get them both enchanted with +15 agility, and together with their 22 base ap and Lightning Reflexes, that should get me close to another 80 ap, which will give my rap a nice boost. That will also be another 5 DPS, and probably around 0.66% crit; it all adds up.

As I've already written, I don't intend to use those daggers all the time, but coupled with the small amount of +hit that I've been saving up recently, they will work very nicely for when I do plan to use them. I'm estimating my melee DPS with them will be around 180ish or so...maybe a little more...which I don't think is too bad.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Why not use Terokk's Quill for a melee weapon? Seems like a much better choice, it's a quest reward so it costs nothing.

http://www.wowhead.com/?item=29329

Mirshalak said...

I'd use that as a 2h, definitely...thanks for the idea, Brian. :)

To clarify though...as I wrote in an earlier article, I do use a 2h. As you can see in the screenshot there, I have a 2h axe equipped; and I'm likely to use that more, you're right. As I also wrote tho, I've found the daggers to be situationally useful in pvp.

They're basically another tool. As a different example, Wyvern Sting doesn't get used all the time; I've got Steady Shot for default use. However, for certain rare situations, Wyvern will be the best thing I've got. The daggers are the same...they're very limited use, but for me they're good to have for when that use comes up.