Beta Testing 9/7/08

So you all want to know how Bella is doing I'm sure. Well, she's still level 70, but I specced her deep affliction to start with, with 5 points in Demo and 5 points in Destro. Hey, a girl needs her stam and shorter cast time for Sbolts.

Haunt has been a lot of fun to play with, and I've been running around with my imp out. However, after reading up on the new pet abilities, I think I may switch to my fel hound. I didn't take Unstable Affliction pre-Friday's patch, but I may take it when I go back in to spec. I did Utgarde Keep with her, and that was fun. It was nice to have mobs up a little longer so that my DoTs could tick, but I severely miss my Dottimer. It's pretty difficult to keep track of your dots, when you're in a group with another warlock, a pally and a mage. So many debuffs it gets a little nuts.

So far, the questing has been nice in Howling Fjord. The music is certainly much better than in the Tundra, comprising of a distinctive celtic or irish feel, rather than stucatto piano music. The scenery is a little prettier as well. I didn't touch Bella all weekend however.

I did play Rissa quite a bit yesterday. The server has still been a little (more) unstable than usual, crashing every 10 - 15 minutes. For this reason, I was dualing with the live-side yesterday, doing dailies on Keri or questing with Rissa as the server allowed.

I did discover a nice little something yesterday that will hopefully go live. Doing dailies more than once while leveling gets you the same amount of XP. See, usually, you do a daily once as a quest, then it becomes a daily and the rewards aren't as good. However, when I completed the Troll Patroll daily, which consists of getting a main quest from the Argent Crusade camp in Zul'Drak, then completing 1 quest from 4 separate sub-zones, then turning in the Troll Patroll (total of 5 quests), I received the same amount of xp. Now this Troll Patroll is a good deal. The troll patroll quest is timed, and you have 30 minutes to complete the 4 other quests. Each of the 4 quick quests rewards 5300 xp (for a total of 21,200). The Troll Patroll quest gets turned in for 21,500. AND!! If you make the 30 minute timer, which you should fairly easily, you get an additional 26,500 xp. So, in 30 minutes, you can obtain a whopping 69,200xp. Trust me, this set of dailies is well worth the time.

I did get to go exploring a new instance yesterday and I actually did it twice in a row. Gundrak is a reasonably quick instance, encompassing 4 bosses, all named Prophet (insert name here), except one. The one is a little bugged, not allowing you to complete a quest involving him, but I assume they'll fix it sooner or later. The first boss summons these little snake adds, so as long as everyone stands on the bosses platform it's no big deal. We had a pally tank, so a little consecration killed the snakes easily. Our other dps comprised a warlock, and a shriest. (And the new shriests are AWESOME). The second boss phases between a earth elemental (that looks like a stone statue) and a purple water elemental. His phasing is based on health, seeming to switch at 50% and 0%. It's a tank & spank, and easy. The third boss changes into a Rhino and then does a silencing and stun effect. The last boss, which you get to by activating altars once the first three bosses are dead, also changes into a Rhino, and he randomly charges party members, impaling them with a dot. This is one of the easiest instances, and the bosses are very easy. In fact, for a mid-level 70's instnace, I would say they need to toughen it up a little bit. Aside from a level difference, level 70's themselves should be able to wipe the floor in there. While I was in there however, I did finally replace my T5 chest piece. I also replaced my T5 legs earlier in the day with a quest reward blue. So it seems that T5 starts to get replaced around level 76-77.

Oh, and I got to do a fantastic quest chain yesterday where you get to play a spy, and dress up like scourge. I won't give it away, and hopefully Blizz will tweak a few things before it goes live as it did have some issues, but it was interesting, and quite fun.

With the XP tweak, and the fact that I still have a ton of rest XP, I'm now nearly 3/4 of the way through 77. Hopefully I'll hit 78 tonight, and finish up Zul'Drak. I haven't even touched Sholozar Basin, and I'm hoping to hit 80 soon so I can try Naxx and give Wintergrasp a try.