Jealous Guy

Every so often, I will read something and think that this is written just for me. Oddly enough today is one of those days, and besides I had no other material to write about and definitely not a page of notes.

The story is on WoW Insider and started a week ago with the news that a player had 50 characters (multiple realms obviously) and they were all at least level 85. I read the article and whilst impressed, I felt slightly cheated (the completionist in me),  thinking he could have levelled them up to 90, now that would have been an achievement.

This week made me sit up and take notice, because Bluespartan a full-time college math teacher (in Real Life not some new class) is able to Valor cap on all 11 of his max level characters. At this point I want to say I am mightily impressed that anybody can play all the current content and level 11 characters, let alone gear them up far better than I can manage, and yes I am indeed very jealous but not in a bad way, maybe envious is more suitable description, unfortunately John Lennon did not write a song called "Envious Guy".

Bluespartan is able to devote about 30 hours a week to WoW, which is considerably more than I can manage. My own time is different each week depending on my wife's shift patterns. This week I play about 20 hours and next week only about 10 hours. I have enough problems capping on one character never mind 11, and at best I can only do this every other week.

Bluespartan times the main capping at about 4 hours and consists of the following activities:

• Barrens Battlefields for 300 (10 minutes or less, not counting material gathering for next week to be done later)
• Daily heroic scenario for 120 (20 minutes)
• Champions of the Thunder King for 150 (30 minutes)
• Kill 12 rares for 180 (60 minutes)
• 10 daily PvE quests for 50 (between rares)
• ToT LFR x 2 for 210+ (2 hours)

The first thing to notice is the Battlefield: Barrens which consists of 10 minutes, which only involves 10 minutes to pickup the quest, portal to the Barrens and hand in the quest for 200 Valor. The gathering is done later in the week. This is a bit of a cheat in my opinion.

Champions of the Thunder King is not something that is easily achieved as a solo activity (maybe on a Blood Death Knight) but according to the article is done on a Shaman in Healer spec. If group is required then they can take some organising, so 30 minutes sounds a bit optimistic.

Kill 12 rares, this might be something that I can work on, I have never deliberately gone looking for them.

ToT LFR in 2 hours even on a healer is really pushing the bounds of incredulity. I never even attempt ToT LFR unless I have a spare 3 hours for one run. 1 hour queueing to get in, 1 hour for the waiting for the group to fill up when people start dropping and 1 hour for the 3 bosses.

Next up is the routine for the alts who will now have the Valor of the Ancients 50% buff:

So the cap for alts takes about two to three hours each and looks like this:

• Barrens Battlefields for 300 (10 minutes, plus 50 minutes to gather materials for next week)
• Daily heroic scenario x 3 days for approx 600 (20 minutes x 3 days)

The remaining 100 or so points can be obtained via any of these:

• Champions of the Thunder King for 225 (30 minutes)
• Kill 4 rares and do 6 daily PvE quests for 135 (30 minutes)
• ToT LFR x 1 for 135+ (1 hour)

This time we have a 50 minutes allocated to gather the materials for Battlefield: Barrens. I would like to pull out some detail from the weekly based on experience.

If the weekly quest needs 150 items of 4 different types and each mob drops one item then we are looking at 600 items = 600 mobs. 600 mobs divided by 50 minutes = 12 mobs a minute.

If you are able to get an extra resource for every 2 mobs killed that would still need a killing rate of 8 mobs a minute.

Working on a principle of 8 mobs a minute and maintaining the same killing spree speed for a whole 50 minutes and the flying time between the 4 sites. The easiest way to reduce these numbers is to kill the Kor'kron Commanders, but I have not seen enough people in the area to attempt them for several weeks now. The caravans are time consuming and I suggest that if you can kill 8 mobs a minutes then this would be less rewarding than 5 minutes slaying. The one thing that would really assist is the overturned caravans, but the chances of getting 2 of these in a 50 minute might be on the lucky side and you would really need the entire site to yourself to pickup around resources.

My experience is that it takes about 2 hours or so to collect the resources and a couple of times I managed to complete on 2 characters in a night session of about 3 hours.

Bluespartan yet again quotes 1 hour for a ToT LFR and this time it is not a healer, so if this is the case, I really want a realm transfer to his server.

There is one section that provides very good advice and that is getting Alts started with the aim to get 480+ iLevel ASAP:

• Level through Townlong Steppes and/or Dread Wastes starting at level 88. Quests give 429 or 437 gear. Supplement with greens your alts win in LFR or daily quests. Try to have everything 429+ by the time you hit 90. Run each dungeon at least once for the quest rewards and XP.
• Run enough battlegrounds as you level so you have 4,000 honor the moment you hit 90. AV is always good XP, and the Call to Arms BG can be quite good. Queue up while you quest. That's two to three upgrades of 476 you can buy on day one. Run Tol Barad for 800 valor (pick up the weekly quest behind the portal in SW first). Convert justice points to honor. Maybe one to two more upgrades. Focus on cheaper items that you need to raise your ilevel quickly, but also be sure to replace poor items first. Bracers count as much in the average as chest pieces. Maybe save some of these points to spend later based on what drops from world bosses and your first LFR.
• Run the Arena of Annihilation scenario for a guaranteed 450 weapon.
• Go to Isle of Thunder. Save the intro quests, except the first one, for when you have time. Go kill a rare and win a key. Run the Treasure Trove scenario and try to find about 10 Elder Coins. You want to make every roll count.
• Run Sha of Anger for the 476 boots (and eventually get the 502s from the 5.3 quest line) and maybe a tier drop (use a coin). Run Galleon and use a coin for a chance at a 496. Run Oondasta and Nalak, even though you may not have those coins yet.
• Run heroic dungeons if you are still shy of 460, but usually I end up skipping these. You can also buy 458 gear at the AH to fill in gaps (hint: you don't have to equip them to boost your ilevel, but you may need to anyway if your character is weak), or run more BGs for the honor points.
• Run the first two LFRs and use bonus coins. You should hit 470 soon. Next Tuesday, get another key from the Isle and run as many LFRs as you qualify for. Run world bosses. Run BGs and spend honor points. Buy the 522 necklace from Shado Pan Assault with your first 1,250 valor points on week two. 480 comes surprisingly fast!

Many of these I have discussed before, but it is always good to have a recap. The world bosses are useful ways to get a boost, but very few people seem to run Sha of Anger and Galleon. Groups can still take 15-30 minutes to form.

The PvP idea is a sound one, and will be a definite bonus when the new patch allows the older Epics to be purchased for Justice.

I am envious of the efficiency, but I doubt whether I could keep up such a routine for longer than a few weeks.

Wasted Time

The Valor weekly cap of 1000, is both a gate and a target. With most of the gear in the early part of the expansion only being available via Valor points and Reputation Quartermasters, it stopped people from the worst excesses of 24 hour weekend binges of constantly running heroics, scenarios or worst of all hundreds of Dailies. At 5 Valor for most dailies this equates to 200 Dailies a week, which in my opinion is a real sad way of reaching the Valor cap.

Some people think that it is easy to reach the Valor cap and others like myself have never actually capped out in any given week. The main reason for this is that due to the Reputation requirements, I had nothing to spend my Valor on, and hence no need to cap. The situation is now reversed and I have most of the reputation vendors open and nothing to spend all this valor on. The one faction with tasty goodies for sale is the Raid Faction - Shado Pan Assault.

Since I have started doing regular LFR, I have discovered that the Valor Cap is not difficult to achieve when I can run the 5 or 6 LFR's that are available to me at 90 Valor a time. This makes capping a relatively straight forward 3 or 4 day activity and it leaves the other half of the week for the alts to enjoy the Valor Bonus Buff of an extra 50%. Why would you continue to play your main character after achieving the buff? The buff is great for your max level alts, but is not benefit to the levelling alts who are unable to do the Dailies yet. This kind of reward promotes a certain type of play style at a detriment to other types of play.

 

Now that I am Mystically Epic on my main I want all my alts to achieve the same the level, and the Valor of the Ancients Buff effectively cajoles me to play level 90's rather than lower level characters.

 

At the moment this is not an issue, because I still have 3 level 90's that are wanting Epic gear, and in particular it is important for me to gear up a Healer that is not chewing through the mana quite as fast I am at the moment.

 

The Mists of Pandaria expansion is like riding up hill on a bike, it was originally very hard work with all the dailies to contend with, then the amount of Valor awarded for certain activities was increased, buffs are available, work orders make reputation chasing easier and suddenly you are at the top of mountain and able to freewheel all the way down. Valor and reputation is available in bucket loads and the time constraints are reduced. I have Valor capped for the first time this expansion and I am enjoying time to random activities with my Shaman knowing that all valor gains at 50% and that even doing a handful of dailies is adding to my valor total so much quicker than previously.

 

Having no set parameters on your play is a wonderful part of the game, and so much of our time in game is spent on efficiency and maximising gains. Instead I am cooking, fishing and actively seeking out digsites, because it is a gentle relaxing way to play the game. Sometimes this is just what we want to do, instead of hitting the cutting edge of our current progression.

 

The only problem now is that after the weekly rest I am rushing to Valor cap, so that I can spend more time playing the game that I want to play.