Official 2.3 Patch Notes

With the upcoming 2.3 patch made official, what features/nerfs did you like? I personally don't like the warrior talent Weapon Mastery nerfed. Why invest 2 points when you CAN be disarmed 50% of the time. The point of investing 2 points is to NOT get disarmed! I don't play a shaman character, but people are fuming over the continuous nerfs it's getting.

I do like that the rogue's Blind no longer requires reagents (yay 2 free bag slots) though. And the poisons last an hour instead of 30 mins.

Your thoughts of the upcoming patch?

How Many Alts Is Too Much?

Ok, I haven't been playing World of Warcraft that long (7 months maybe ?), but I've created 5 alternate characters. I have a warrior, priest, rogue and 2 druids (alliance). And I've been thinking of creating a paladin (better tanking class ?). I don't play my druids much unless my main realm is offline, so that leaves the warrior, priest and rogue, and / or paladin. It's always fun leveling characters, but when am I going to find the time to level all of them :). Plus being able to learn all of the professions and be a mule are another reasons to create alternate characters. So what's your limit?

Leveling

If you're looking for a good guide to level your character try Jame's guide (along with other people's guides). There's also a good resource on most of dungeons as well. Currently Jame and other's are working on a guide for levels 60-70.

I have used this guide to level my main character and it has worked well, but even better for my rogue. I'm not sure if it's doing the same quests the second or third time around that helps level quicker or if it's a class difference. In any case the guides are free and you can even add your own guide to the repository.

I've opted to skip most of the quests in Stranglethorn Vale and grinded a bit along with running Scarlet Monastery, Razorfen Downs and Uldaman. I usually make notes of where to quests and the locations to complete the quests on paper first (thottbot.com & wowhead.com). Also, thottbot.com offers good hints & tips in the comments section. After researching my quests I know what to expect and where to go.

Using a map/GPS addon will save you time as well. I use Titan Panel, but have tried Cartographer and MetaMaps as well (http://wow.curse.com/downloads/addons/). I like Titan Panel because it doesn't take up too much memory. I also use MozzFullWorldMap to display the whole map including the undiscovered areas.

A good tip when leveling your first character is to create an alternate character as a mule to bank/auction your loot. This really helps when you have very little gold and no bags.

Learn To Aggro or Not

Here's what happened on my second attempt at Uldaman. It was a full group and we had a warrior (48), warlock (46), paladin (46), warlock (40) and myself (rogue 48). We started off running past all of the dwarves at the cave entrance into the portal. Nobody died getting here, everything seemed to be going according to plan!

First battle went ok, but I noticed that the warlock was a little trigger happy and jumping right in and grabbing aggro. The warrior didn't even get to charge. Since we just started the instance I didn't mention it. We kept going and before we got even go to Ironaya, I mention to the 'gun happy' warlock that the warrior should start the battles so he can gain threat and hold the aggro. I might've came off a little harsh, but I didn't want the rest of the group to suffer because of one player's mistake. I waited for a reply from the warlock, but didn't get one.

What happens on the very next battle? The warlock aggros again, but this time I didn't help out and the warlock was running around with her pet trying to get the trogg off her. I watched her health go down and luckily the warrior was helping her out, while the warlock and I took out the other troggs. I kept quiet this time, but the warrior mentioned (party chat) that the warlock not to aggro anymore. Still no reply from the warlock, so we forge ahead.

Again the warlock sees the first trogg and sends her pet. The warrior and myself jump in and then the paladin asks, "Who's pet is always aggroing?". The warrior and myself answered, "40 warlock". After finishing off the troggs we loot everything and find that our 'trigger happy' warlock has disconnected. I'm pretty sure she disconnected during the battle after our comments. In any case the warrior joked about it after all the loot we found :).

I don't know if she (40 warlock) ran instances like that before, but if she did, she couldn't have lasted that long without a wipe. I also found it strange that she didn't know how to get to Badlands. Neewb? Maybe? My point was to teach her about aggro, not to alienate her.

Closing In...

I'm almost at level 50! Pretty quick leveling compared to my main character (which sits at 64). I'm thinking of holding off on leveling my rogue and continue leveling my main character to 70. After which I'll be able to gather all of the materials required for my rogues jewelcrafting and engineering skills. I'll also be able to help level my brother's characters (rogue & paladin) quicker.

On a side note... I was questing over in Stranglethorn Vale and stumbled upon a dwarf warrior and gnome warrior (separate locations). I took them out as quick as possible to make the gank as painless as possible :D. For the dwarf, I did the run of the mill cheap shot and sinister strike followed by a kidney shot and another sinister strike. As for the gnome he managed to escape from my stun lock, but the mob finished him off along with my poisons.

As I was making my way out of that area when I myself was ganked (50/70 dwarf warrior). I guess you can't win them all!

So not much ganking was done since I was mostly farming materials and trying to finish Find the Gems and Power Source. I ran Uldaman twice, but didn't finish it.

The first time my group got to the part with dwarves and the cache (spawns the dwarves with gem) and wiped which was a result of a bad pull. After that everyone quit. The second time I got a group together we managed to get past that and the ring of golems (spawns 1 at a time). We thought we were pretty good (even with 4 players more... details here). Then wiped on some mobs 2 battles later :/.