I have been Shattered!

So the Shattering is among us! I thankfully was at work all day yesterday when 4.0.3a was pushed through the servers so I did not have to sit staring at my computer wondering why the servers hate me so much that they refuse to come back up. I instead sat at my computer at work and wondered how long it would be until I could go home and stare at my computer. Luckily for me servers started coming back to life about 45 minutes to quitting time for me so I could start playing in the new Azeroth as soon as I got home.

First thing I did was log into my mage and run around Stormwind and see some of the devastation. The city looks at nice as it did on the beta. After sight seeing I went and did the cooking daily so that when Cata hits I'll have a nice amount of cooking recipes ready. Then I took a gryphon to the Hinterlands and ran over to Hillsbrad so I could do the famous Plants vs Zombies game although in game its called Peacebloom vs Zombies. I gotta tell you that the last two levels of it are tricky as hell! I had a hard time on it and then I decided to finish it later and I made a Gnome Priest.

Now I spent all of yesterday trying to come up with a good name for both my Gnome Priest and my Dwarf Shaman. I finally came up with a name for both and... both of my picks for my shammy were unavailable! Well I spent a few more minutes coming up with a suitable replacement name and thankfully it was available! Welcome to Azeroth Wellesley the Gnome Priest and Moltke the Dwarf Shaman! For anyone who gets the two names...yes I am a huge history nerd for picking those two names but I don't care! I leveled my Gnome through the starting zone and it is pretty fun, especially compared to the old starter zone that Gnomes and Dwarves shared. I ended the night with my Gnome at level 14 and a half and spec'ed as Disc(Penance is OP). My goal is to get him as high a level as I can before Cata because I'll be really busy leveling to 85 then. So what did you do last night in the post shattered world?

The Shattering

I have a little bit of time this morning so I'm gonna post a quick blog. According to those in the know tomorrow the famous 4.0.3a patch, also known as "The Shattering" patch, is going to be launched. What does this mean for you? Well it means that you will be able to:
Play as new race/class combos like Dwarf shaman, Troll druid, Gnome Priest, Tauren Pally, etc.
Explore the newly shattered old world.
Do all of the new and awesome quests in the old world like the Plants vs. Zombies chain.
Experience the newly retuned 1-60 instances.
See the new Cataclysm log in cinematic/log in screen.

Now I don't know about you but I am REALLY looking forward to this patch because I got the opportunity to play a Gnome priest in the beta and I loved it. The coolest thing about this patch being released tomorrow is that I get a nice long weekend to play in the new world because of the Thanksgiving holiday. While I would LOVE to have the expansion already this patch will go a long way to keeping me occupied until then.

Now...what am I going to name all the characters that I am going to create tomorrow???

Cataclysm Dungeons/Raids and You!

So...I'd like to start out by apologizing to all of my faithful blog readers for the long, long, long absence. Work has been beating me up so hard that by the time I get home I usually make it to my chair before falling asleep and when I do wake up I barely have the energy to even log on to WoW let alone to write a blog post. :( But anyway I am able to write something now so enjoy!

So by now everyone has heard how hard heroics are in the cataclysm beta and how cc will be king and all that. Well there are more changes to running heroics at 85 then just that so I figured I would write a little for you guys who aren't in the beta or aren't as in the know as others. In the current expansion you ding 80 and start running heroics right off the bat for badges and maybe a piece or two of gear so that you can start raiding. After you hit 80 you don't ever queue for a regular instance because the gear is not as great as anything that drops from heroics and you don't get any justice points/badges in them after doing the daily regular dungeon.

In cataclysm things are not like this at all. Yes the gear from heroics is still better then what you are going to be getting from regulars and it'll be tons better then what you are wearing at 85. So what's different you may ask? Well first off each instance has a minimum average gear level requirement and if you aren't at or above that number then you can't queue for those dungeons. The first two dungeons that you can actually queue for at 80 are going to be Throne of Tides and Blackrock Caverns. Neither of these has a minimum gear requirement so you can start queuing for them after you run to each instance entrance and "discover" the entrance area. Each instance in cata requires you to have run to the entrance and discover it before you can queue for it. I guess blizz got tired of people complaining about others who would die in an instance and release just to get lost trying to get back to the instance. Anyway back on topic, since these two dungeons have no gear level requirement you can run them over and over until you ding.

At 81 you can keep on queueing for these two instances and you unlock two new ones, the Vortex Pinnacle and the Stonecore. Now these two instances require you to have an average gear level. At 80 in full ICC10 gear you'll be sitting in the 251ish range and in full ICC25 gear you'll be around 270ish. You can check out what your gear level is now ingame since they added it on to your character screen in 4.0.1 so you don't need an addon to find out what your average gear ilevel is. If I remember correctly VP and Stonecore require a 272 score so you will have to start replacing at least a few pieces of gear with new cata gear to get in to these. Why the hell did they do this average ilevel crap? Well I guess it is because they don't want people to have grinded up to 85 and then attempt to run heroics in ICC gear that they started the expansion with.

When you unlock the next set of instances, Grim Batol, Halls of Origination, and Lost City of the Tol'vir, they require 305 ilevel score. There is no way that you can get to 305 with all of your level 80 gear so expect to either run a lot of instances before this or to do A LOT of quests for gear rewards. Now if you do nothing but run intances...you have a chance of getting your gear level score to where it needs to be but I recommend mixing in some questing for gear as well as money.

Now you hit 85 and you are ready to queue for heroics...well just wait a second there. Heroics also have a minimum gear level...329. Now to get your gear level to this number you will have to farm regular instances to up your score. When raids were first opened on the beta servers new premades were released as well. The gear level for those premades was 350. This means that after running heroics and full heroic gear you will have a 350 gear level. You can probably start running raids slightly before this I am sure so I would say that mid 340s would probably be passable for raids. Once Cata comes along we'll know for sure what we'll need to raid. I hope this post helps at least one person prepare for Cata instancing. I am pretty sure my math is right but if someone has correct information please feel free to post it. =D