Season’s Greetings…

You’ve probably noticed that there’s been a slight gap between my last post. This has been due to the run upto Christmas. I’m hoping to be able to add some content either during or after the Christmas period. I’m sure you’ll agree, that it’s a stressful time, but with plenty of rewards at the end, especially, if you’re fortunate to have children like myself.

When you grow up, you kind of lose the magic of Christmas, which thankfully, in some way returns when you see your children or grandchildren opening their presents or you whitness that agonising wish on Christmas Eve, to try and get to sleep or Santa wont come! Yes… we’ve all been there!

I’ll be visiting my Brother in-law and Sister on the 28th, and will have a great opportunity to get to try out Legion (Alpha). This will be my first real look at the game. I hear there’s alot of good things. Demon Hunter is a definite and due to my dealings in Transmog, I want to see what the new Transmog wardrobe has to offer.

A little something that you’ll find special. For the last 4 years, on Christmas Eve, I visit a site called Norad. This is a very clever site that tracks/simulates Santa delivering presents around the globe, you’ll notice he’s already doing his rounds now. Wait till the children see this, they’re absolutely amazed.

Anyway, wherever your celebrating Christmas, be sure to stay safe, enjoy and be merry.

I wish you all a Merry Christmas and have a Happy New Year!

Graham.

TradeSkillMaster 3 Released

It’s been a long wait, but after Months of testing and waves of Beta invites, TradeSkillMaster 3 is finally available for download.

TSM3 tweet
To download TSM3, please follow the link here. If you experience any issues with this addon, be sure to post all information within the TradeSkillMaster website IRC, which you can find here.

Thanks to Sapu and his team for such an awesome Addon!

Things To Do Before Legion

Sadly, the run up to any rLegionLogo_lessglowelease to a new expansion is always a long and drawn out process, with the lack of new content and things to do. The introduction of Legion, will be a longer wait than the release of any previous expansion. But if you’re willing to read this first installment, you’ll find plenty of things to occupy you until Legion finally hits and hopefully prevent you from cancelling your subscription.


PvP:

With the introduction of Season 3, everyone will be keen to gear up again. Dont worry if you’ve not done any PvP in Seasons 1 and 2, as all gear whether PvP/PvE will get boosted to 715 ilvl (15 ilvl below Gladiator gear from Season 2) in Season 3 whilst within a Battleground, Arena or Ashran. This helps close the gaps for new players. However, always remember ilvl is just a guide of your gear, it isnt the important factor, you’ll need to concentrate on the stat priority for your class in PvP, to reap the full rewards of your gear.

Ashran can be an excellent way to gear up, if you have the patients. There are many objectives and quests to occupy you, and as long as you’re within a good group and lead by a good leader, the task becomes almost effortless. If you’re unfortunate and dont get a good leader or group, this task is almost near impossible or could take some time to complete.

Tips:

When you kill a player in Ashran, make sure you loot the corpse. You will have a chance to loot one of the following.

 Troll Feet
 Blood Elf Ear
 Tauren Hoof
 Goblin Nose
 Orc Tooth
 Forsaken Brains
 Draenei Tail

 Dwarf Spine
 Human Bone Chip
 Pandaren Hide
 Severed Night Elf Head
 Tuft of Gnome Hair
 Worgen Snout

Each one of these items, will earn you a Dented Ashmaul Strongbox, which contains either gold, PvP points or gear. Horde corpses drop alternative tokens and reward the same Strongbox.

Pick up some Song flower which can be found in The Dark Woods. Upon use, will increases all your stats by 15% for 1 hour.

Star Root Tuber found in Gorian falls. Restores health and reduces 40% damage taken for 10 seconds.

Make sure you kill the rares within Ashran, as they drop Manuals, Books and scrolls that will benefit spells for your class. A map outlining all the rares can be found below.

Ashran rares


Mount Runs:

You may have read my previous articles here or via Twitter, that Ive started running old instances to earn hard to obtain Mounts. Most recently I finally got the Fiery Warhorse’s Reins from Karazhan. Here’s a list of some other Mounts that maybe of interest to you and no doubt, something for your friends to envy.

Instances
 Deathcharger’s ReinsStratholmeLord Aurius Rivendare

Raids
 Blue Qiraji Resonating CrystalTemple of Ahn’Qiraj – Trash
 Green Qiraji Resonating CrystalTemple of Ahn’Qiraj – Trash
 Yellow Qiraji Resonating CrystalTemple of Ahn’Qiraj – Trash
 Red Qiraji Resonating CrystalTemple of Ahn’Qiraj – Trash

Level 70

Instances
 Reins of the Raven LordSethekk Halls (Heroic) – Anzu
 Swift White HawkstriderMagisters’ Terrace (Heroic) – Kael’thas Sunstrider

Raids
 Fiery Warhorse’s ReinsKarazhanAttumen the Huntsman
 Ashes of Al’arThe Eye (Tempest Keep) – Kael’thas Sunstrider

Level 80

Instances
 Reins of the Blue Proto-DrakeUtgarde Pinnacle (Heroic) – Skadi the Ruthless
 Reins of the Bronze DrakeThe Culling of Stratholme (Heroic) – Infinite Corruptor

Raids
 Reins of the Grand Black War MammothVault of Archavon – All 4 Bosses
 Reins of the Azure DrakeThe Eye of EternityMalygos
 Reins of the Blue DrakeThe Eye of EternityMalygos
 Reins of the Black DrakeThe Obsidian SanctumSartharion (3 Drakes – 10)
 Reins of the Twilight DrakeThe Obsidian SanctumSartharion (3 Drakes – 25)
 Reins of the Onyxian DrakeOnyxia’s LairOnyxia
 Mimiron’s HeadUlduarYogg-Saron (No Watchers – 25)
 Invincible’s ReinsIcecrown CitadelThe Lich King (Heroic – 25)

Level 85

Instances
 Reins of the Drake of the North WindThe Vortex PinnacleAltairus
 Reins of the Vitreous Stone DrakeThe StonecoreSlabhide
 Swift Zulian PantherZul’GurubHigh Priestess Kilnara
 Armored Razzashi RaptorZul’GurubBloodlord Mandokir
 Amani Battle BearZul’Aman – Timed Reward

Raids
 Reins of the Drake of the South WindThrone of the Four WindsAl’Akir
 Flametalon of AlysrazorFirelandsAlysrazor
 Smoldering Egg of MillagazorFirelandsRagnaros
 Experiment 12-BDragon SoulUltraxion
 Reins of the Blazing DrakeDragon SoulDeathwing
 Life-Binder’s HandmaidenDragon SoulDeathwing (Heroic – 10/25)

Level 90

Instances – None

World Boss
 Reins of the Heavenly Onyx Cloud SerpentKun-Lai SummitSha of Anger
 Son of Galleon’s SaddleValley of the Four WindsGalleon
 Reins of the Thundering Cobalt Cloud SerpentIsle of ThunderNalak
 Reins of the Cobalt Primordial DirehornIsle of GiantsOondasta

Raids
 Reins of the Astral Cloud SerpentMogu’shan VaultsElegon
 Spawn of HorridonThrone of ThunderHorridon
 Clutch of Ji-KunThrone of ThunderJi-Kun

I hope that this has given you some ideas or motivation, if not, be sure to read my next installment where I’ll hopefully tempt you further. Thanks for reading!

 

 

November 30th Hotfixes

Well it looks like Shipyard Missions are the most notable changes in this Hotfix. No doubt, this is a catch up mechanic for those who didnt enjoy the Shipyard from the start, due to the cost in resources and the % chance of a ship to sink in a failed rare mission. Shipyard changes below.

Naval Missions

Rare Naval Missions should now appear more frequently

Increasing the chance of success on a naval mission will now also decrease the chance a ship will be destroyed on failure. If the mission success chance is at or above 90%, no ships will be lost on the mission.

Naval blockade missions now have a shorter duration of 30 minutes (down from 4 hours), reduced Oil cost to 50 (down from 100), and increased the amount of time before a naval blockade returns to 7 days (up from 5 days).

Ships and Crews

Increased success chance bonus on missions provided by a Human Crew by 50%.

Increased success chance bonus on missions provided by a Pandaren Crew by 33% and the bonus will now apply to Missions that are 12 hours or longer (was 18 hours or longer).

Significantly increased the effectiveness and bonuses provided by Naval Equipment items by 100%.

PvP Season 3

To finish, if your getting involved with the PvP in Season 3, you’ll also be grateful to see, that this hotfix has finally fixed the issue with the Warmongering Gladiator’s Medallion of Adaption and Warmongering Gladiator’s Medallion of Cruelty that had the wrong information within the tootip.

 

Legion Database

Thanks to the hard work and continued commitment to the World of Warcraft community, Wowhead has finished datamining all the items that will be coming in Legion. Obviously, this is surplus to change at a later date, as the developers continue to develop Legion, but I’m totally grateful for all the work Wowhead have done to give us a taste of whats to come.

Table of contents:

Legendary Items
New Toys
Fun Items
Artful Dodging Rogue Set
Cooking Recipes
Artifact Quality Items

Please use the link HERE to view Wowhead’s post.

Ive also posted below, further information regarding Legion. Links have been added.

Further Legion information:

Complete Legion Database, Talent Calculator, Talent Guides, PvP Guides
Legion Beta 3D Models – All Artifact Weapons
Legion Beta Datamined Class Changes
Build 20740 Datamined Professions, Battle Pets, Mounts
Demon Hunter Audio Including /flirt and /silly
Acheivements, Class Followers, Icons, Bosses, Scenarios

Icy Veins

Having an army of Alts at my disposal, means I have to make sure that they’re properly geared and set up correctly. I do this, by collecting all my information from a website called Icy Veins. I used to use a site called Noxxic, but to be blunt, it was very poor. After using the powerful tool, that is Google and reading many reviews, I finally found Icy Veins and allas, I finally got my Alts correctly setup.

You can find complete guides for every class, created by some of the best players in World of Warcraft. The information is constantly updated and many of the guides are backed up with many hours of theory crafting, meaning we dont have to take the pain staking task of doing it ourselves.

Each class guide covers the following;

Builds, Talents and Glyphs: Learn how to choose your talents and glyphs
Rotations, Cooldowns and Abilities: Master your rotation and cooldowns
Buffs, Debuffs and useful abilities: Discover your arsenal and useful abilities
Stat Priority: Read up on respective values of your statistics
Enchants, Gems and Consumables: Choose the best Enchants and Gems
Macros and Addons: Step up your game with useful Macros and addons
Gearing up and (BiS) Best in Slot: Find the best gear for your character

An added bonus to what Icy Veins has to offer, is their indepth guides on Raiding, Questing, earning Reputations and last but not least Garrisons. I know that these guides can be found on Wowhead, but the ability to have them all under one place, is very convenient, especially, if time is of the essence.

If you’ve not visited Icy Veins yet, see for youself, what all the hype is about and cast your own opinion. It’s an integral part of my setup and what I use to maximise my gameplay within World of Warcraft.

Altoholic (Addon)

Today’s addon review is regarding one of the very first addons I installed, called Altoholic. This was a fantastic addon, which could keep a considerable amount of information regarding all of your characters on every realm in one place. For someone like myself, whom for example has 12 level 100’s, approximately 15 level 90’s across multiple realms, this is an essential and reliable addon.

Here are a couple of the essential benefits that I’ve added below.

Mail – Altoholic can warn you that mail is about to expire, or mail that’s due to be returned. So those days of losing mail, when they expire, are long gone.

Guild Bank – keeps track of all the items stored in Guild Banks on all your characters.

Item Tracker – Tracks all the items in your inventory on all your characters. This is now also available within TSM3.

Characters – This option gives you a detailed look of your all your characters Gear, Talents, Glyphs and Professions.

Search – The ability to search for something particular within all of your characters. Ideal if you have an item on another character, but unsure who.

Gold – Keeps track of your Gold balance on all of your characters.

Altoholic first released back in 2008 and has been an integral part of my addons, with this, it’s made my life so much easier. I’d hate to imagine how much gold, items I’ve had deleted, not checking my mail before expiry.

Today, there are many addons, that may do the same as above, but individually, if you require something, as an all in one, then I suggest giving Altoholic a try. The only downside would probably be the memory usage to run the addon, this is dependent on the number of characters it’s covering. Still, if your fortunate like myself to have an excellent PC or laptop, then this won’t be an issue at all.

You can download Altoholic from Curse.com, HERE.

I hope you found this review helpful.

Patch 6.2.3 coming on 17.11.15

As informed a couple of weeks ago, Blizzard was implementing a patch onto the PTR (6.2.3), to give us some content. Sadly, this is likely to be our last installment until Legion, but I’m sure you’d agree with the old adage “Something is better than nothing” is well suited for this patch. The release of the patch will hit live tomorrow, Tuesday 17th November (Wednesday 18th November [EU]).

If you’ve missed the news about Patch 6.2.3, and want to know whats coming, then fear not, here’s a link to Wowheads Patch 6.2.3 Survival Guide.

Although I’m fully aware that this is nothing more than a filler patch to occupy us till the release of Legion, I still appreciate the fact that Blizzard were good enough to give us something. I’m looking forward to the new Cataclysm Timewalking Dungeons and to further boost my gear, thanks to the return of the Valor system.

As you’ll know, I don’t raid, due to time restrictions, but I will in time, be looking at purchasing a boost for HC or Mythic Archimonde. At the moment, the 80k-100k for a spot, seems a little steep, especially, when you only want the boost, for the new ilvl 800 Heirloom Trinket. Either way, I’m happy to wait it out. History shows us that the closer you get to a new expansion, the lower the price goes down.

Cya in-game guys and as ever, thank you for reading!