You are probably reading this because you are frustrated and keep dying doing your mage solo pulls. Let me tell you right now, you are not alone. Even the guys that make youtube videos that make it look so easy spent hours and hours messing up and dying before they could get to a point of mastering the pull.
Let me preface this by saying that I am not a mage solo pull master but I do enjoy learning the pulls and flexing on my non-mage friends. So to everyone who is new to doing solo pulls in dungeons, these are the tips I wish I knew when I was first starting out.
Here is me, lying dead after a failed jump
Bring more consumables that you think you need
This includes health pots, bandages, nature or shadow protection potions, magic resistance potions and the big ones that can really save your butt are Limited Invulnerability Potions. If you are working on a solo pull that requires additional run speed remember that you can grab one Swiftness of Zanza, use it and then grab a second one for when you need it. This just saves you a trip.
Practice the Jump
Before you pull any mobs you want to get to your kill spot and practice the jump. Do this until you feel like you can make this jump without falling (and dying). It is the worst when you have spent hours trying to gather the mobs and FINALLY get to the kill spot to immediately fall and die.
Now add a few mobs
Once you feel comfortable with jumping around the kill spot, pull a few mobs, get them to the kill spot and practice controlling the pack with a rank 1 blizzard. Do this until you feel comfortable with the kite
Learn the pull
So now it’s time to start learning the pull, the first couple of times you are doing the pull, focus on controlling your pack. You might miss some of the mobs and that’s ok, don’t expect that you will have a perfect pull your first few times going through. Your goal on these first few pulls is to practice the path that you are going to take and make it to the kill spot.
And there you have the basics for learning dungeon solo pulls. Now is where repetition is your best friend. Once you can reliably finish these solo pulls you may want to find ways to improve either your time to kill or your mob count. You can use the in-game timer if you just want a basic stopwatch while you are working on your pulls. You can also use a weak aura or nova instance tracker to keep track of your time and also your mob count.
If you have specific problems you can always ask for help from mages that know this stuff better than you do. I’ve spent many a late-night session having a mage buddy watch me do my pulls via the discord screen share. Remember that no one person is going to have all the answers, if what someone suggests doesn’t work you can try another friend. For example, I was working on making my mara solo pull better and some of my packs were resetting. I figured out which ones by running back through the dungeon after I was finished.
If you don’t know anyone in the game that can do the mage solo pulls, try asking the community either on the mage discord or on the classicwow subreddit. Include as much information as you can or even a video. There are a lot of helpful people out there that want to help you…but saying help! I suck at mage! Why I no live!? That’s not helpful information and not going to get you a reasonable solution to your problem.
I hope that these tips out there help all you aspiring solo pullers out there to get started and stop dying.
A lot has changed in wow classic since the start of 2021 and you may be wondering: is wow classic worth getting into now? Lucky for you, today is one of the best days that you could get started. Today I’m going to talk about the reasons why NOW is one of the best times to get into wow classic. We will go over some of the reasons you may want to play and some suggestions for selecting a server or “realm” that is right for you.
World of Warcraft population has always been a cyclical thing when it comes to player activity. You typically see spikes in in game activity at three major times during the game’s life. These are:
When the game first comes out and usually for several months following
Spike in population during expansion pack announcements.
Increase in player activity in the month or two leading up to the expansion, especially if there is a pre-patch that majorly changes the game like we will be getting at the end of WoW Classic.
You may wonder why you should care about increases of player activity. For MMOs they are the most fun when there are a lot of players out in the world. They are designed to be played with other people and the social aspect of the game is what makes mmos special.
So in no particular order here are 10 reasons to play wow classic right now
The burning crusade is coming this year! So now is your last chance for a good long while to experience wow classic…unless you want to lock your character to vanilla. But if you plan to play the burning crusade go get your fill of the base game now before your server has progressed.
a lot of players are returning to the game making group quests and dungeons popular activities again. The best times to play WoW Classic are between now in the first few months of the burning crusade
Player coordinated rerolling events on several servers, these are great events to participate in for new players that haven’t played the game before, those that are looking for a new group to play with and those that were looking for a fresh start
Play different classes and Figure out what you like and don’t like. Even if you plan on playing a blood elf or draenei now could be time spent getting acclimated with the game. I’ll admit that I’ve been in love with the same handful of classes since wow first released back in 2004, but i’m using my time to try out classes I’ve never played before and I’m finding it refreshing to play something new.
Experiment with professions. Professions are for way more than just player power and I think sometimes people forget that. There are a lot of profession specific activities that open up depending on the professions that you choose. Being able to gather with skinning, herbalism and mining opens up a whole new element of gameplay. Engineering has a plethora of toys you can use, and your tailoring, leatherwork, blacksmithing, etc have in game items you can create for yourself and to sell to those who will be needing new, more powerful items.
Play with friends (old and make some new friends) – since the announcement of the burning crusade I’ve seen a lot of my friends start playing again and some of them have even rolled a character on my server! It’s exciting! I’m excited. Even random people that you group with while playing you can keep track of with the friends list. You can add them to your list by typing /friend and their name
Do some level 60 raids if you have never experienced them. This one is pretty low on the list for me, I know that there is a lot of emphasis on raiding in the game but I think right now isn’t when I would want to start out in a new raiding guild. But there are a lot of pick up groups or PUGs that would take new players. So go experience molten core or blackwing lair while you can, they won’t be run as much once the burning crusade comes out.
Do some pvp! In the burning crusade we see the systems around pvp change on a huge level. We see the introduction of area matches, pvp specific gear (that you get by participating in pvp) and we will see a lot more organized teams playing when you are at level 60. So go dabble a bit now. I have had the most fun making my shaman elemental and just blowing kids up, yes you can hate me if you want but i love it. We will also see a huge shift as the talent trees get changed during the pre patch, so that might be pretty fun too since people will be playing with a whole new set of rules for their class.
Finish leveling that character you have been meaning to up to 60, if you plan on playing the character in the burning crusade or plan on having that one extra tailoring or alchemy cooldown, now is a better time to work on that character so that you are free to level up once the dark portal opens
Get prepared for the game past 60 (or 58) This could involve leveling up professions, gathering some consumables that will make you more powerful during your leveling in outlands. You can also fill up your quest log with completed quests to give yourself a small jump in experience at the very start.
How to pick a WoW Classic server that is right for you
I like to start with the population and faction balance of a server
https://ironforge.pro/servers/ – shows how many people are playing based on those that are raiding. Of course not everyone that plays wow is raiding but it is a good indicator as to how populated a server is.
you can also use the in-game launcher to tell you the server population but this won’t show you the balance between factions
Here are some pros and cons to each different server level
High (skewed to your faction) – pros
The higher the pop, the more people there are to play with. This is great for participating in group quests and dungeon groups. This way you don’t need to be that annoying friend that always asks for boosts. (Dude I’m a healer, isn’t we any to try and carry you through wailing caverns).
High (skewed to your faction) – con
Along with high population servers you have more competition for open world farming. This includes herbs, minerals, and killing mobs out in the world.
There may be server queues during peak times such as the first week or so of a new expansion or dungeon release.
High (skewed to the opposing faction)
Less people to play with and you have the same competition for open world resources. One pro i could see with playing the lesser played faction on PVP servers at least is you would have a lot of open world pvp activity, so if you like fighting out in the world you won’t have any shortage of opponents buuuut you may have a better overall experience if you chose a server that was more balanced between the factions
Now lets talk about medium and low pop servers
Medium population servers
There will be more resources out in the open world. So if you are someone that likes to farm their on herbs or kill things for your own cloth, it will be much easier on a medium pop server.
When you play on a medium population server you should have no trouble finding a group during the high volume times, so that is when new patches go live and open up new raids or dungeons. As time goes on it will be harder to form pick up groups and you may need to plan your time in advanced like planning to do a certain dungeon at 8 o’clock on a Tuesday with your guild. You can still get your group activities done but it will take more effort on your part.
Low population servers
Low population servers are great for the solo player. If you want to just go out into the world and play wow like a single player RPG with occasional guest stars this may be the server type for you. On low pop servers you will have a much easier time farming out in the world but you may have trouble finding groups for dungeons or raids. I was talking to one of my friends who plays on a low pop server and he spent several hours both creating a group and then completing a sunken temple run. And this was after the announcement of tbc which is a bit concerning. Of course this is just one anecdote, but your mileage may very.
What I recommend for your next WoW Classic server
My first choice will always be to play on a higher population server, overtime the population of the high pop servers will always be stable. They offer a greater number of options of schedules for both dungeon and raid activities.
If I were to pick a pvp server I would want to choose a medium pop well balanced server and I would want to bring some friends. This way I would hopefully stand a chance in a scuffle, assuming that I’m playing 1v1 against someone and on a well balanced server I would have a good chance of running into players of the opposing faction.
What are you waiting for? GO PLAY!
I hope by now I’ve convinced you that now is the perfect time to get into wow classic, and it will continue to be a great time to get into the game until player activity begins to wane, hopefully late into the burning crusade expansion.
I’m still having fun playing WoW Classic and enjoying some of my favorite raids before the new expansion comes out. Zul’Gurub was my introduction to raiding in wow all of those years ago. It was my first time figuring out how to play a healer and I will always remember those hours wiping on the Raptor boss trying to execute those mechanics.
Zul’Gurub is still worth running in every phase of wow classic
Zul’Gurub is one of those raids that people always want to run because this is where you get the best leg and helm enchants for most classes. If only the warlock enchant had +spell hit like the mage one does I would be ready to raid with the big boys. Here are the different enchants that each class gets from winning one of the 2 Primal Hakkari Idols that drop in each ZG.
ZG is also a great starting raid for new characters, and since I always seem to be leveling new characters this is a great place for me to spend my time. I have a new warlock that can still use several items that are huge upgrades. Besides the enchant and the gear upgrades I found another reason to run Zul’Gurub on my warlock.
How ZG benefits you in leveling up past 60
I rolled a new blood elf right when the original Burning Crusade was initially released, so preparing a character to dive right into Outlands is something new for me. I’m trying to see what I can do today that will give me an advantage in leveling once we are able to advance past 60. A few things that I am planning to do is collect some quests items that can be turned in for experience. The Primal Hakkari wrists, chest and shoulder pieces are frequently deleted in the ZG runs that I’ve been in. Since there is very little competition for these items I was able to pick these up on my warlock. These pieces of gear are not currently upgrades for me, so I will be waiting to turn these in until the start of Burning Crusade for a nice bonus of 6,600 xp each or 19,800 xp total. This will be one more bar of experience that I don’t need to fill once the Dark Portal opens.
WoW Classic is winding down while we wait for the Burning Crusade
I’ve noticed a big shift on my server since the announcement of WoW Classic: Burning Crusade last week. Prices on everything have been falling. There are not as many high level dungeon runs being done and several raiding guilds have called it quits. I’ve see a lot of players returning and leveling up characters that they plan to bring into the next phase of the game. We are all hungry for more information and for a beta announcement. I have my fingers crossed that this will be the first beta that I actually get to participate in for World of Warcraft (even though I opt in for every single one). I’m only a little salty…
In the mean time I’m doing what a lot of others are doing and leveling new characters and preparing my current level 60s for the next expansion which mean collecting items to turn in for xp and leveling up profession while the materials are cheap.
For the past year I’ve been obsessed with playing World of Warcraft Classic. I spend so much time reading about, researching and playing the game. I’ve been venturing out into some video editing which is new for me. It was more of an experiment in a new media but the response I got to my video was mostly positive so I thought I’d share here 🙂
In my video I talk a little bit about WoW Classic crafting basics including:
Why Thunderbluff is so great for crafting and using the AH
What to make in game that sells
How to easily calculate the profitability of things
The importance of saving your money
I also go over my mini TSM checklist
Open AH and type “/tsm scan” to update prices
Select profitable items to make
Search raw materials for that crafted item
Add crafting batch to the Queue
Gathering tab for any missing materials
Craft!
Continue to browse AH for things to make
List auctions
What’s next for Diary of a Guild Leader?
Ironically, all of the time required to fulfill my guild leader duties left me with little free time to create guides and tell stories about my experience in the game. Since I no longer am leading a guild (a story I’ll tell one of these days once I cool off) I have a lot more desire to make the type of content that I can be proud to share. I always think it’s silly when content creators apologize for taking breaks from creating like they’re some regularly scheduled tv show. Know that this is a passion project for me and I refuse to create or maintain a schedule of creating stuff if I don’t feel that I can make something original, exciting to me or useful to all of you. That being said I have been bitten by the inspiration bug and have a lot of things in the works so keep an eye out for me in the future 🙂
I’ve been playing World of Warcraft since it first came out in 2004 and have eagerly jumped into to every expansion that has come out. Some have held my attention more than others and I generally judge the overall expansion by how long I play it.
The previous expansion, Battle for Azeroth, captivated me for a whopping 4 months before I moved on. The deal breaker for me was how much grinding was necessary for me to enjoy the parts of the game that I liked playing. I love group content but the game wanted you to do all of this repeatable quests in the world that got super boring. This also made it really hard to play any of my other characters at a high level because of how hard it was to catch up (and you really couldn’t for a long time).
My hope in playing Shadow Lands was to be able to play my multiple characters without giving myself 40 hours worth of work to do per week. The first week is over and I clocked about 25 hours at level 60, which only was the past 4 days. I took a new approach to the game (for me) and didn’t do any research on what I should and shouldn’t be doing. I simply went in blind and played the game.
For this expansion I decided to dust off my priest who has been mostly untouched since 2015. Leveling was mainly a solo venture until I reached about 58 and happened to be in the same place in the story as some of my friends. I found that it was much quicker to do the quests as a group, especially the ‘kill ten boars’ type of quests. The party syncing feature in the game still confuses me and I understand what it should be doing in theory but every time I used it I’ve found myself wondering what the point is.
The new zones are stunning visually and find ways to encourage you to seek out high places and enjoy some beautifully crafted scenic views. I love the different flavors and color schemes of each zone and find some of the color pallets a bit nostalgic and similar to those found in The Burning Crusade.
The world quests have more substance and story to them. Instead of a simple go here and do X and then move on to the next quest, most of the world quests have multiple parts that force you to pay attention rather than zoning out to old episodes of The Office while you’re grinding your dailies. One of my favorite world quests is “Summon Your Sins” which has you collect fragments and use alchemy to combine the fragments into an on use item that summons a creature. I love these type of flavor items that are in the game, I enjoy using these items that give you a buff and make you a bit more powerful.
The world seems more dangerous and I like it. In the past few expansions of World of Warcraft I felt super powerful and almost would never die. I could pull giant packs of mobs and just mow everything down like I was grinding through a dungeon crawler like Diablo or Path of Exile. The first couple time I tried to use that same tactic in Shadow Lands I died a horrible death. In fact I died many times on my road to level 60 and felt the sting of punishment in that runback much like it is in WoW Classic. I liked that there were consequences to accidentally pulling extra enemies.
As we head into the second week of Shadow Lands I have pretty big dilemma. I’ve been playing a lot of WoW Classic for the past year and the final raid is coming out a week after Shadow Lands release. I hate the timing of this. So now I have too many games that I really WANT to play but not enough hours to do so. Lets not even talk about Cyberpunk 2077 which comes out the following week! It figures that all of these things would come out at the same time!
For now, I’m committed to raiding in WoW Classic to get through Naxx and hopefully set myself up to move into a future TBC Classic. This is assuming they go in that direction. I’m hoping for an announcement in February or sooner 🙂
Lethon is one of the 4 Dragons of Nightmare available in WoW Classic in phase 4 which went live on April 15th 2020.
As with other world bosses in WoW Classic, this boss will spawn at a random time between 2 to 4 days since it was last killed. World bosses spawn out in the world, so they can only be killed and looted once per spawn. The loot will go to the first person or raid that hits the boss. You can tell if you have the tag, and will get the loot, if the boss’s health bar is red. If the health bar is grey it will not be your loot.
Lethon is a raid boss which will need between 15 and 40 players to defeat, depending on the skill and gear of those participating. Similar to Onyxia and other dragons, you will position the tank away from the rest of the raid. The healers and damage dealing players will be grouped on one side of the boss avoiding the tail and the head.
Fighting Lethon as a Tank
2-3 Tanks are needed or 1 Tank with +200 Nature resistance.
Tank the boss facing away from the raid. All players that are not currently tanking should stand on one side of the boss to avoid the Noxious Breath and the Tail Sweep.
Tanks will switch at 3 stacks of Noxious Breath. If using a NR geared tank, the debuff should be resisted and not tank swap is necessary.
Be sure to front load high threat abilities early in your tank swap. As you get additional stacks of the Noxious Breath debuff, you ability to generate threat will suffer.
You will want to keep track of the number of times Shadow Bolt Whirl has been cast and after 4 casts you will want to run through the boss to flip him around so the bolts do not hit your raid.
DON’T DIE! If you die you get a debuff that prevents you from making further lasting contributions to the fight.
BONUS: You can attempt to use the Dragon’s tail to knock those that are asleep out of the Dream Fog.
Fighting Lethon as Damage
Avoid the front and back of the Dragon and stand in the safer position to the boss’s side.
Avoid Dream Fog which looks like clouds of gas moving slowly around the area.
When Lethon’s health reaches 75%, 50% and 25% everyone in the raid will be effected by Draw Spirit. As the bosses health approaches each of these thresholds you will want to make sure that you are as far away as possible. Once the stun wears off, use your quick and instant abilities to kill as many shades as possible.
DON’T DIE! If you die you get a debuff that prevents you from making further lasting contributions to the fight.
Fighting Lethon as a Healer
When Lethon’s health reaches 75%, 50% and 25% everyone in the raid will be effected by Draw Spirit. As the bosses health approaches each of these thresholds you will want to make sure that you are as far away as possible. Once the stun wears off, use your quick and instant abilities to help kill the shades.
Avoid the front and back of the Dragon and stand in the safer position to the boss’s side.
Avoid Dream Fog which looks like clouds of gas moving slowly around the area.
If you run out of mana you can run out of range of the boss and drink to full.
DON’T DIE! If you die you get a debuff that prevents you from making further lasting contributions to the fight.
List of Lethon Abilities in WoW Classic
Noxious Breath – Frontal cone breath that applies a stacking debuff to those that are hit. Ideally, only your tanks should be getting hit by this. For each stack of the debuff, the cooldowns on all abilities are increased by 10 seconds..
Dream Fog – Two clouds will be up at a time and will move around the boss for the duration of the fight. You will have 10 seconds from the time the cloud spawns to get out of it, after that it will put anyone caught in the cloud to sleep.
Tail Sweep – Inflicts 600 to 1000 damage on enemies in a 30 radius cone behind the dragon, knocking them back. Avoiding the tail is even more important on these
Mark of Nature – Players kill by nightmare dragons gain a 15-minute debuff which essentially takes the player out of the fight for the duration of this debuff due to Aura of Nature
Aura of Nature – If a player with Mark of Nature comes within 100 yards of the boss, this will cause the player to enter into an undispellable sleep for 2 minutes.
Shadow Bolt Whirl – This is a set of shadow bolts that will only be cast on one side of him at a time. He will cast this spell 4 times and then switch to the casting from the other side of his body.
Draw Spirit – Each player within 100 yards of Lethon will be stunned for 5 seconds and a Spirit Shade will spawn from their location and start walking towards Lethon. If a Spirit Shade reaches Lethon it will heal him for 1% of his life. The shades can not be hit with AOE abilities but only have around 500 health. They also walk at a fast pace toward the boss once they are spawned.
Emeriss is one of the 4 Dragons of Nightmare available in WoW Classic in phase 4 which went live on April 15th 2020.
As with other world bosses in WoW Classic, this boss will spawn at a random time between 2 to 4 days since it was last killed. World bosses spawn out in the world, so they can only be killed and looted once per spawn. The loot will go to the first person or raid that hits the boss. You can tell if you have the tag, and will get the loot, if the boss’s health bar is red. If the health bar is grey it will not be your loot.
Where is Emeriss Located in WoW Classic
There are four portals out in the world where Emeriss can randomly spawn. All of the Dragons of Nightmare will spawn at the same time and one at each portal, although the window that they will spawn is over at 48 hour period of time.
Emeriss is a raid boss which will need between 25 and 40 players to defeat, depending on the skill and gear of those participating. Similar to Onyxia and other dragons, you will position the tank away from the rest of the raid. The healers and damage dealing players will be on either side of the boss avoiding the tail and the head.
This fight is extremely susceptible to griefing from both the opposite faction and your own. For each death that occurs on this fight a mushroom will spawn causing damage to be dealt to those around the mushroom. I’ve seen players try to disrupt a groups fight by diving head first into the melee group or on the tanks.
Fighting Emeriss as a Tank
2-3 Tanks are needed or 1 Tank with +200 Nature resistance.
Tank the boss facing away from the raid. All players that are not currently tanking should stand on either side of the boss to avoid the Noxious Breath and the Tail Sweep.
Tanks will switch at 3 stacks of Noxious Breath. If using a NR geared tank, the debuff should be resisted and not tank swap is necessary.
Be sure to front load high threat abilities early in your tank swap. As you get additional stacks of the Noxious Breath debuff, your ability to generate threat will suffer. Each rank of your abilities will be on a different extended cooldown so once you get high stacks you can go through all the different ranks of your abilities.
Be mindful of where the Dream Fog is at all times and also if there are a large number of Putrid Mushrooms in the area. If avoiding the Putrid Mushrooms is becoming unmanageable for your raid you should move to a more clear area.
DON’T DIE! If you die, not only do you spawn as a mushroom and cause issues for your raid, but you get a debuff that prevents you from making further lasting contributions to the fight.
BONUS: You can attempt to use the Dragon’s tail to knock those that are asleep out of the Dream Fog.
Fighting Emeriss as Damage
Avoid the front and back of the Dragon and stand in the safer position to the boss’s side.
Avoid Dream Fog which looks like clouds of gas moving slowly around the area.
When Emeriss’s health reaches 75%, 50% and 25% he puts the non dispellable damage over time (DOT), Corruption of the Earth on everyone in 100 yards. Save your health potions, shadow protection potions, immunity cooldowns and bandages. If you are able to heal, just a little bit it could save you on this fight.
Watch out for Putrid Mushrooms near you, they do damage to nearby players.
DON’T DIE! If you die, not only do you spawn as a mushroom and cause issues for your raid, but you get a debuff that prevents you from making further lasting contributions to the fight.
Fighting Emeriss as a Healer
Assign healers to each group in your raid for Corruption of the Earth which goes out when Emeriss’s health reaches 75%, 50% and 25%. Make sure your healers are assigned in such a way where each person in the raid receives at least one heal within 10 seconds.
Paladins and Priests – dispel/purge Volatile Infection from players as they get it
Avoid the front and back of the Dragon and stand in the safer position to the boss’s side.
Avoid Dream Fog which looks like clouds of gas moving slowly around the area.
Watch out for Putrid Mushrooms near you, they do damage to nearby players
DON’T DIE! If you die, not only do you spawn as a mushroom and cause issues for your raid, but you get a debuff that prevents you from making further lasting contributions to the fight.
If you run out of mana you can run out of range of the boss and drink to full. Just be aware of each of the 25% health thresholds as you will want to be able to help.
List of Emeriss Abilities in WoW Classic
Noxious Breath – Frontal cone breath that applies a stacking debuff to those that are hit. Ideally, only your tanks should be getting hit by this. For each stack of the debuff, the cooldowns on all abilities are increased by 10 seconds..
Dream Fog – Two clouds will be up at a time and will move around the boss for the duration of the fight. You will have 10 seconds from the time the cloud spawns to get out of it, after that it will put anyone caught in the cloud to sleep.
Tail Sweep – Inflicts 600 to 1000 damage on enemies in a 30 radius cone behind the dragon, knocking them back. Avoiding the tail is even more important on these
Mark of Nature – Players kill by nightmare dragons gain a 15-minute debuff which essentially takes the player out of the fight for the duration of this debuff due to Aura of Nature
Aura of Nature – If a player with Mark of Nature comes within 100 yards of the boss, this will cause the player to enter into an undispellable sleep for 2 minutes.
Volatile Infection – A dispellable disease that is cast on a random player within 100 yards of the boss. This lasts for 2 minutes and causes 875 to 1125 nature damage to the player and nearby allies every 5 seconds.
Corruption of the Earth – Affects all players within 100 yards. 10 second Shadow DoT that deals 20% of the player’s max health every 2 seconds. It cannot be dispelled and has a 100 yard range.
Putrid Mushroom – When a player dies, a Putrid Mushroom spawns at their corpse. This deals 600 Nature damage per second to any surrounding player.
I got my Paladin to level 70 and locked my XP and then began to work on this character’s “modified endgame”. In our group, we choose to not adhere to the typical hardcore restrictions that usually goes along with these types of projects. The goal was not to try to recreate an authentic experience. We just wanted to run around and do the raids!
The main self-imposed restrictions were that we were to level authentically, not using high level alts to assist with leveling, and we were restricted to the classes that were available during TBC time. We had a couple people who didn’t really listen and rolled up with monks in our first raid, but I don’t think anyone was mad about it.
Getting Geared up
Since we are not the first group of people to do this type of level locking challenge, there were a lot of good resources out on the web where people had already done the theorycrafting to determine what you should be doing. Keep in mind the current version of World of Warcraft may still look like your typical Burning Crusade experience, but the character design and gearing is completely different.
It was determined that heroic blue gear was superior to some of the earlier raid epics. I was able to find a very thorough list of best in slot gear if our goal is to over power our characters and smash some dragons.
One of the more challenging parts of playing in old content is how little of the older trade materials are available. If you want the raw materials to craft anything you will likely need to farm them yourself. I spent several hours on Sunday farming enough herbs to make a 100 haste potions and I don’t even know how long I should expect those to last.
Even if there is the odd item that you can use on the auction house, it is typically way overpriced due to low supply and sporadic need.
At least professions are structured in a way that I am able to pick up herbalism and mining and immediately start collecting what I need. I can just as easily drop one of these professions once I have a good stockpile of items and pick up enchanting to turn all my unneeded gear into enchanting materials for gear enhancements.
Getting Raid Ready
The first hurdle is getting enough people interested in playing through this content. Next you need to do the legwork to have an acceptable level of gear and other preparations done. My very first raid with my Paladin was done just hours after I had hit level 70. I barely knew what I was doing and ended up having some performance issues due to not researching my class prior to our raid.
Goals For This Week
Continue to farm the remaining blue items I need from dungeons
A few nights a guildmate of mine announced that he was starting a new adventure and invited everyone in our guild to come along. We were going to take advantage of this small lull in content to do something out of the ordinary.
A few of us met while playing on a WoW private server based on the Burning Crusade expansions. So it seemed only fitting with all of the buzz around Blizzard’s possible plans for a Classic TBC, that we would go revisit some of that old content.
What is Project TBC
My guild all rolled ALLIANCE on SISTER OF ELUNE RP realm. We will level to 70 and lock our xp and we’ll be doing heroics and TBC raids.
What are the Rules?
Any race including allied races, no DKs and no Monks. We are only allowed to use enchants/profession perks/gems/gear of TBC era. We are allowed to use Heirlooms/xp pots to level fast. We are not using mains to boost gear at 70 since this defeats the purpose of the project but we might change this rule in case we need a lot more gear to clear the 25 mans.
How do I lock my level once I reach level 70?
To keep your character from leveling higher, follow these steps:
For the Horde faction:
Go to the Hall of the Brave, Valley of Honor in Orgrimmar.
For 10g he will put a hold on all experience points earned.
You can enable your experience again by seeing Behsten and paying another 10g .
Are there people that actually play like this?
There are a whole lot of people that choose to level lock at certain expansions. Here is a list of some character profiles that are locked at 70. Here is a huge list of characters locked at level 70. There are a lot of communities that hold level specific events for this type of play.
Current Goals
I’ve decided to play a Paladin and I am currently level 48 and hope to be 70 later today. We have about 15 people at level 70 in my guild and 35 total. My guild was scheduled to do Kara and Gruul last night. To all that are participating: Happy leveling!
Two and a half years ago I started this blog in conjunction with a writing challenge called Blaugust. This wasn’t my first blog and definitely won’t be my last. I enjoy engaging with a number of hobbies beyond just gaming and love writing about them.
I did well in that very first challenge, wracking up a total post count of 24 for the month. This writing streak continued through the end of the year at a rate of roughly one post per week. Eventually I was down to about 1 or 2 posts per month which was me writing only when I REALLY wanted too.
Reinvigorated to Write and Taking a New Path
At the start of 2020 I started a new blog around my neurotic organizing habits and wrote like crazy for 2 months. When March came, work and life got crazy and I all but stopped writing.
We spent almost 4 years saving aggressively for down-payment on our next home. The beginning of March we closed on our new house and moved. Two weeks later my employer announced some pretty steep pay cuts at the same time I took on a new freelance writing job. Everything seemed to be pushing me in this new direction and I decided to walk away from the full time job in order to pursue my passion projects.
Blapril Happened Just at the Right Time
Although I really wanted to participate in Blaugust in 2019, I simply did not have the time. Writing 30 posts in a month is a huge commitment. I saw that the Blaugust community was doing an impromptu April version of the challenge.
This seemed like Blapril was meant for me and came at the right moment.
So far, I managed to get a few posts out. I did need to wrap up some work related items before I was able to completely pack up that phase of my life.
What is Blapril/Blaugust
Blaugust is a blogging event that challenges us to write and post every day during the month. We have an active community on discord where we share our experiences, ask for help from the more experienced writers and commiserate when pumping out content gets tough.
