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Breakfast topic: Future heroic classes
Blizzard has told us that the Death Knight will be the first of the heroic classes, and probably the only one we can expect to see in the next expansion. I haven't heard a word about what other heroic classes might be in the future. Therefore I started thinking of my own. Sure, sure we'd love to see Bards and Battlemages, but how about something new. Here are some of my thoughts: The Craftmaster- Any existing non-heroic class, but can have three or four trade skills. They'd have access to bind-on-pickup Craftmaster-only items. No hot-glue gun required! The Supertwink- No, I don't mean another rogue, but a character that cannot level past 29. The Supertwink may be able to access some abilities and skills from higher levels. The Gunslinger- Somewhere between a Rogue and a Hunter. Gunslingers do not use pets, and have a few up close trick shots. They can dual wield ranged weapons and stealth about.
Breakfast Topic: Rerolling our roots
The question arose in the WoW official forums "Why do they call it 'rolling?'" This is of course in reference to creating new characters. The original poster pointed out that there really is no rolling involved just selection. I'm sure its obvious to most of us that the terms comes from pen and paper role playing games where we roll dice to determine character statistics and sometimes other attributes. But it got me thinking of terms that we use for WoW that came from other games: The battleground Zerg comes from Starcraft's Zerg race which was kind of a fast, battle driven faction. DKP is short for Dragon Kill Points, a term that dates back to EverQuest when the main bosses were dragons. Nerf means to make things less powerful, and refers to the Nerf brand of spongy toys. For some reason we refer to instances as dungeons, despite the fact that Stockades is the only actual dungeon that comes to mind. Though I have to admit, even in D&D dungeon crawls were typically done in caves or castles. It's surprising how terms seem to stick with us even when they're obsolete. Speaking of rolling, when was the last time you actually rolled down a window in a car? It's good to go back and remember out gaming roots. I'm sure there are many more crossover terms, and terms from the World of Warcraft lexicon like Leroy Jenkins, will out live Azeroth. For the life of me I can't find the etiology of the term "twink." What else am I missing?
The Art of War(craft): Twinkage part II
Last week, we discussed the matter of twinks and PvP. In many occasions, twinks exist purely to PvP, dominating lower-bracket Battlegrounds with their über-gear. In fact, there is no shortage of twink complaint threads on the World of Warcraft forums. Whatever one might feel about twinks, it's an ongoing phenomenon that shows no signs of letting up. I'm not a big fan of twinkage myself, but it's such a distinct subset of the PvP crowd that I feel compelled to write about it. Twice. Oh, and for the record, I am quite aware that 'twink' is a homosexual slang term. I prefer to think of the Hostess snack, though.So here we go, the second part of our look at twink PvP. Last week we discussed an overview of the potential items that twinks can obtain... I didn't make a comprehensive list since that's a considerable task. I did, however, give some pointers in the right direction. Considering that Resilience does not exist in lower level PvP, the key stat is Stamina, so get gear with loads of it. There are also ways to improve on gear, particularly using permanent item enchants. The most notorious of these is probably the Nethercleft Leg Armor, which requires Level 60 to apply, but has no item restriction. It might cost a bit of gold because it requires Primal Nether to craft, but the +40 Stamina is well worth it for twinks. Patch 2.4 also promises removing binding on nethers, which may or may not lower prices. For casters, the tailoring equivalents of Golden and Runic Spellthreads are also good investments, despite the 20 stamina hit.
The Art of War(craft): Twinkage Part I
In the wild and wooly world of WoW PvP, there's one interesting subcategory that deserves mention -- the twinks. Defined as characters who are disproportionately powerful for their level, twinks are either loved or hated. On one hand, if you have a Level 70 character (or a few max-level friends), it's rather easy to 'twink up' another toon. On the other hand, many players who are leveling for the first time may find their Battlegrounds experience diminish when they encounter (and consequently have their faces smashed in by) ridiculously-geared and enchanted opponents on the field. In fact, twinks are a subculture of their own, with more than a few guilds set up exclusively for twink PvP. Love them or hate them, twinks are here to stay. In fact, in response to a question at last year's Blizzcon, Blizzard responded that they were actually considering Arenas for characters Levels 19 and 29 (the common twink level limits). The problem, they said, was designing rewards for them and if there was sufficient player demand. Designing rewards for twinks seems to be a hyperbolic response considering that it's likely that the only characters that will excel in those low levels are already well-geared. That said, there is a small subculture of players who enjoy PvP at low levels to the point of wanting an experience toggle to keep their toons at a comfortably low level.The reasons why people twink up toons varies, although most of these players have one or more Level 70 toons and want to have a little fun being overpowered in the Battlegrounds. Personally, I enjoy PvP at max level because it affords me the greatest challenge and gives me the most skills to work with. At lower levels, all classes have a limited number of skills and -- here's the important part -- not all classes will be good to PvP with because not all classes have access to key PvP skills yet. However, I'm sure a lot of people find twink PvP a lot of fun, even if they eventually plan to level past the twink stage. For purposes of this article, we'll take a look at Level 29 twinkage... it's not too low to have extremely limited skills, yet not too high so as to have too much of a skill discrepancy between classes.
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Fishing etiquette
The weekly fishing tournament is taking place this afternoon in Stranglethorn Vale, and I'll probably be in attendance, hoping desperately to catch the last rare fish I need. I'm often intrigued by the etiquette that comes into play in different parts of the game where people are thrust into close contact with one another, and the fishing contest is one of the more interesting examples. For instance, in my experience, most other players will leave you alone if you're fishing from a school, such as the Highland Mixed Schools in Terokkar Forest. I've often seen fellow crawdad seekers flying low overhead, but they have always moved to the next spot once they noticed my presence. On the other hand, the weekly contest seems to be a no-holds-barred match, with people fishing wherever they can, whether or not you claimed the spot first. Personally, I try to avoid fishing in the same school as other people as much as possible, even during the contest. How about you?
Patch 2.3: Twinks become gods
As you know, in patch 2.3, many of the previously ho-hum mid-level dungeon drops are set to actually become useful, worth the trip you make to go get them in the dungeon (in most cases). Overall, this is a blessing for players everywhere, either starting out with their first characters, or leveling up long-forgotten alts.Twinks, however, are going to become a much greater nuisance than they were before. Some of their old items are going to be upgraded by default as the new patch comes in and the old items all around the world get replaced with the new. New twinks, however, will have the privilege of setting their sights on the best of the best items for their particular class and level bracket, putting an even further distance between them and other players who just want to enjoy a bit of PvP as they level up. This is particularly true with new low-level epics such as the Deadman's Hand which, at level 29, seems designed to be the pet dream of twinks everywhere, regardless of race or class. Does Blizzard intend to support twinking? And what's the whole point of twinking anyway?
Breakfast Topic: Are twinks an endangered species?
Reader Stalzar is worried about twinks. With the announcement of experience gain acceleration between levels 1 and 58 coming down the pike, he is concerned that this means an end of his beloved PvP characters. I have never like twinking much, that process where players maxed out the gear on a low level (mostly level 19) character for the sole purpose of living as gods in Warsong Gulch. I used to be nothing but irritated that when I attempted to get into the battlegrounds my characters were instantly trounced simply because they were not completely dedicated to PvP. I was frustrated, I was bitter.Now that I have grown up a little Warcraft-wise, I realize that this is in a way an adaptation to the battleground system. I do think that the twinks might do better at least as far as their reputation goes, if they played in their own battlegrounds, where they would have equal footing with other twinks. The current experience system allows a character to stay at level 19 for a very long time, enabling them to get the most out of their PvP-ness before sliding into the next bracket. Does this mean that when experience gain is boosted in a future patch the world of the twink will die out? I don't think so. This sub-culture arose because of the desire to be the best at one specific aspect of the game. Will this change things for them? Sure, but I expect that the same inventiveness that went into the creating of twinks in the first place will also spur them to adapt to whatever affect accelerated exp. would have on them. What do you think? Will the twinks survive, or be lost to the annals of WoW history?
Whoops, I'm level 20
If you've ever been ganked by a twink in 10-19 WSG, you might chuckle at poor Neflm's predicament. He accidentally leveled his Witching Stave-wielding Warlock twink to 20. Apparently all it takes to kick a twink out of the battlegrounds... is 200 experience.Of course, this is exactly what that XP toggle is for, if Blizzard ever chooses to implement it. Or if you want to go the other direction, you could just award experience in the BGs, which would definitely put a stop to twinking forever (and make Neflm's problem much more common).But he can't be too distraught-- even if he's accidentally leveled his 19 twink to 20, there's always the chance to be a terror at 20-29. As even he says, in the comments, "at least Stonetalon should be a cakewalk."
The twink experience (and toggling XP)
If you listened to the latest episode of Titan over on WoW Radio (and did you hear that we're teaming up with them to do a new show, starting Saturday? You did? Good), you heard Totalbiscuit and Eriyanna talk all about twinks-- alts who are created just to rule a certain battleground bracket. Most players aren't real big on twinks, and Jonaleth straight out wonders why people do it. Is it just for fun, or do the people who stay at that level just want to deal with simpler strategies and less abilities (since lower level characters don't have as many tools to play around with as higher level characters)? The bad answer is, of course, that people just like spending gold and time to rule the battlegrounds with an enchanted, blue-geared fist. But the "good" answer is probably that yes, there's a lot of strategy in squeezing as much power you can out of a lower level character. Totalbiscuit, in the podcast, actually says that what twinks do at 19 and 29 is really what all players do at 70-- work hard on gear and enchants to get every little drop out of a character with a limited level, and that's very true. So here's an interested idea from Brook on Garithos: how about an XP toggle, where players can actually switch off XP gain if they so choose. That would bring twinking to a whole new level, and allow players who twink to go into instances and run groups over and over again just to get the gear they want. Predictably, players aren't thrilled with that idea-- most people have enough trouble with twinks in the BGs already for Blizzard to more or less officially sanction the practice with an official feature like that. Sure, it would definitely bring a whole new aspect to twinking. But most players, it seems, think twinking has too many aspects in the game already.
Engineering: The Jack Of All Trades Profession
Lately I've been hearing a lot of nay-saying and negativity about engineering. It's been coming at me from all angles. Members of our guild It Came From The Blog were even telling me a couple of weeks ago that I shouldn't even bother because "you don't get that many good items." Let me throw some light on this from a different perspective and tell you why I like engineering. If you're going to look at engineering as a money making profession, then yes, absolutely, I agree with you. But just like there are more "stats that matter" than pure damage per second, there are other reasons to pursue a profession other than just money. For many classes, but I'm thinking of one in particular, engineering can fill gaps in your class that almost nothing else can fill. Take for example the Paladin class. They have no ranged attack ability, but with a little time spent in engineering they can make throwable explosives. Yes, the cooldown is evil, but... if you're soloing with a paladin, you don't have the boomerang, and you need to pull... don't you think you'd find that handy? Furthermore let's remember that engineering is the profession of choice for PvP twinks! If you haven't made a twink for Warsong Gulch in the Level 19 bracket, let me remind you that there aren't a lot of head pieces in that level! The Green Tinted Goggles from engineering are widely regarded as the second best level 19 twink piece next to the Lucky Fishing Hat which requires a lot of fishing and a lot of luck in a level 30+ zone. At later levels, the Field Repair Bots are very popular as well, even though they are somewhat expensive to make. Any engineer who can throw one down in an instance will surely make friends of the people who didn't want to hearth home, repair, and come back. Engineering is not for everyone, but it sure is for anyone who wants to have fun and laugh a little. And while you won't be joining Azeroth's Fortune 500 anytime soon as an engineer, you will get lots of unique stuff over the course of your engineering journey that will help you in the game or - at the very least - give you a good laugh.
Phat Loot Phriday: Everglow Lantern
This twinkalicious quest reward isn't exactly much loved, but it has its place.Name: Everglow LanternType: Uncommon OffhandDamage/Speed: NAAbilities: +3 Stamina Use: Heal your target for 135 to 165. Unfortunately, there's a gigantic 30 minute cooldown on this one, so it's not extremely useful. But in certain situations it comes in handy, and while it's likely you'll ditch this one fairly quickly, for the level or two that you have this paired with a good one hand weapon, the extra healing helps in a pinch. The thing looks pretty cool, too, as the glow spreads on your character, other characters, and in the surrounding area. Kind of fun to carry around at night with all the graphic options turned up, and RPers may even keep it around for those nighttime play sessions. How to Get It: This is a quest reward, that's available to both factions via two different quests. For Alliance, you've got to do Supplies to Auberdine, an escort quest in Ashenvale, and Horde can do Weapons of Choice at Camp T in the Barrens. Horde can get their quest at level 17 (though the mobs are much higher level, around 23-25), and Alliance can get the quest at 19 (though it too will be hard for someone that low to complete. But with help it's more than possible, so if you really wanted to put this on a 19 WSG twink, you definitely could.Truthfully, there are better items you could put on a twink, but speaking as a Mage who brings this thing into the lowbie battlegrounds, there's nothing like getting funny tells when people wonder how you heal yourself. I can only hope the other side wonders, too.Getting Rid of It: Oh right-- this is why I have this section. Because not all the phat loot you get is worth keeping. A vendor will give you 16s 32c for this, or it will DE into a Strange Dust, Lesser Astral Essence, or a Small Glimmering Shard.And speaking of Phat Loot, have you left a comment on our Spectral Tiger Mount contest yet? The contest ends tonight at 7:00pm EST-- if you haven't, hurry over and get it done!
WoW Moviewatch: Pwnsyou the level 1 twink
Meet Pwnsyou, the level 1 Rogue twink who cost someone a fortune in enchants. And to what purpose? Little Pwnsyou is too low level to enter the Battlegrounds, so perhaps his sole purpose in existance is to duel (and beat!) players ten levels above him in Goldshire.Previously on Moviewatch...
The Dirtybishop hotfix
Well, that's not what Blizzard is calling this hotfix, but it's what everyone who's heard the story of rogue twink Dirtybishop would call it. While I have to admire the dedication of a level 19 who acquired Brooch of the Immortal King and Skyguard Silver Cross, I'd never want to run into such a player in the battlegrounds. And neither, apparently, does Blizzard. A hotfix applied today has made several Outland items require level 70 to equip: Brooch of the Immortal King Skyguard Silver Cross Airman's Ribbon of Gallantry Skyguard Tabard Well, I'm sure it was fun while it lasted! And equally important to some, players should find their frame rates around the Blade's Edge Forge Camps to be greatly increased.[Via MMO Champion]
Beware of supertwink
We've had people try to get exalted with every faction. We've had people try to get every pet in the game. We've even had people who want to five-box every class to 70. But today, I think we may have met the person who has put the most time and effort into non-endgame WOW -- Dirtybishop. Dirtybishop is a level 19 human twink on the Blackrock realm. At first glance, his profile looks pretty normal. Engineering goggles, WSG rep rewards, Meadow Rings of Eluding, ridiculously high-end leg armor and enchants. It's well-known that low-level rogues can get amazingly high dodge chance by stacking agility, so he's got a lot of agi enchants. But ... wait, what's that in the trinket slot? Brooch of the Immortal King? Skyguard Silver Cross? Yes, this 19 twink is exalted with Sha'tari Skyguard. I don't know how he did it, although the prevailing guess is that he was summoned to Skettis and stood out of range of the experience and in range of the reputation gains. One of his guildmates said it took their mains four and a half weeks to farm Bishop the trinkte. I have no comprehension of the amount of effort this person has put in just to do WSG over and over and over again -- nevertheless, you sort of have to admire that single-mindedness. Plus, if he ever decides to level, he'll have a nice flying mount waiting for him.
Spellthread bug, not that I'd have noticed...
Like many guilds, my guild has a small bracket of level 19 twinks that are set up specifically to run the Battlegrounds and do nothing else. Now I've seen some of the people in guild really go overboard with their characters, pimping them out in the best blues they can get. I've heard about them running instances in raid format so as to wipe all experience points -- just so they can get certain boss drops. I've heard all manner of things. But this one just makes me go "wha?"According to Haetred on the official forums, since the patch people have been unable to apply the Spellthread enchant to any pair of legs lower than level 35. Now, originally his(her?) post wasn't saying "un-nerf this" - it was simply asking for consistency. If Blizzard was going to remove Spellthread's ability, then you needed to remove everyone's ability to have these in the lowbie brackets so as to avoid any potential imbalance. (We hear that word thrown around a lot in regards to PvP, really.) As opposed to that, Nethaera came back and let the original poster know that this nerf is an unintentional bug, and that Spellthread will once again be available to people of all levels in an upcoming patch. Now I can't speak for anyone else here (and I'm sure I'm about to get torched for this, probably) but it seems to me that Spellthread and Clefthide/Cobra armor kits are becoming the new Crusader/Lifestealing of the Battlegrounds. I can't even fathom using those on a low-level character considering what kind of money I'm going through on consumables. I'd be more inclined to sell a spare one than to use it on a character that eventually will level out of that gear. (Not that I wouldn't happily take the money from someone wanting to use it on a twink, mind.) What do you think about using Spellthread and the high-end Armor kits on Battleground twinks? Does it seem like a crazy expensive thing to do to you too, or am I just not 'l33t' enough to understand? I can't fathom spending that in the face of the cost of raid progression (well, up until now...) but maybe that's just me.
The challenge of twinking out a healer
When you think of PvP twinks, you usually think of DPS. People usually twink rogues, hunters, or sometimes warriors (even though at level 19, where people usually twink toons, there's not much difference between a fury and a prot warrior). The idea, of course, is to see how much damage you can push out at the lower levels (usually by finding early blues and upping stats like strength and agility with extra enchants). But Lane over on livejournal has another plan: she wants to twink out a healer.It's an interesting thought, but it seems a lot harder than a normal twink. For one thing, most healing classes don't really come into their own until you get the higher level talents involved; at 20, most of them don't have a lot to play around with. And healing gear isn't as easily found at the lower levels-- I'm sure there's a few +healing pieces around at 40, but I can only find three at level 20 (and those aren't anything to write home about). Sure, you could still twink it, just by maxing out intellect or buffing out on armor or stamina (come to think of it, a paladin with a ton of armor and stamina would be hilarious to play as a healer in 10-19 WSG), but you don't have nearly as many options as the DPS twinks.As for classes, most priests would get eaten up, especially if you're playing with other twinks. As a few people point out on the LJ thread, both shaman and druid don't really have all their worthwhile abilities until later in the game (a shaman will have ghost wolf, but if you're seriously healing, you shouldn't be in that form much anyway). A paladin would probably be the best (because a healer in mail is always fun), but it would be tough, too -- you wouldn't have that bubble yet (not quite true-- see update).Have you ever twinked a healer or heard of anyone who did it well? A good healer is already a pretty rare thing to find in BGs, so if nothing else, it might be fun to forge a new playstyle as a healer twink.Update: That's what I get for never playing a paladin-- they do have a bubble at level 18. (Thanks, cluelessnoob).
Level one twink is "an existential WoW exercise"
Ratherbrute sent this to us (he saw it in a signature on the forums), and I love his description of it. It's a profile of a level one twink, and Ratherbrute calls it "an existential WoW exercise." Basically someone out there, either in this profile or in the game (this character doesn't show up on the Armory, but the only character with this name shows that characters under level 10 aren't profiled on Blizzard's database), has pimped out a level one character.It's definitely a fascinating idea, though. What's here mostly consists of enchants-- health and stamina chants on the armor give this level one paladin 453 health. For comparison, I went and rolled a level 1 myself-- an unplayed level one blood elf paladin starts with about 38 health. There's also a bit of extra damage on the weapon (untouched paladins hit for 7-10, and the twink hits for 13-17) and a little extra armor.The Unadorned set used here is from a vendor in the Ghostlands-- it does seem to be the highest armor set available from a drop or a vendor. There is better level one armor out there (note that the armor is level 10, but level 10 is not required to wear it) from quests, but I'd imagine that actually completing any quest that pushes you past level one would defeat the purpose. Same deal with the weapon-- there are better swords around, but they're all quest swords, so it'd be tough to find something better while still remaining level one.Of course, while Ratherbrute says this is all just existentialism, I'll still ask the central question here: just why would you want to twink a level 1? What is this pally planning on fighting, anyway?
Forum Post of the Day: Twinks ruin low level BGs
Before the advent of cross-realm battlegrounds and server transfers, I rolled a new character on a brand new server and had the best of times running battlegrounds while leveling up. In my mind, it was fun precisely because there weren't any twinks yet -- everyone was working on leveling up and playing in the battlegrounds on the same level. And leveling a new character up on any server, with cross-realm battlegrounds, I don't think I'd have the same amount of fun running the low level battlegrounds casually. Because so many people playing in the lower brackets have characters that have been pushed to the max of their abilities for the level, and I'm just trying to level up. But is this really something Blizzard should do something about or is it just working as intended? Regardless of what you think, you can join in on the discussion.
Phat Loot Phriday: Cruel Barb
Since pretty much all of our phat loot so far has been crazy awesome endgame stuff, I thought it might be nice to take a look at some lower level lewts. And so here's this, a dual sword twink's favorite weapon.Name: Cruel BarbType: Rare One-Hand SwordDamage, Speed: 30-57, 2.80 (15.5 DPS)Abilities: On Equip: +12 Attack Power Usable at level 19, this sword is a no brainer for WSG twinks. It's not the only weapon you could choose to equip your overpowered lowbie with, but with a respectable drop rate, a nice attack power bonus, and the ability to dual wield them for a double bonus, it's an easy choice for any melee class. How to Get It: If you've ever made it past level 20, you've probably already gotten it already. Cruel Barb is dropped by the great Van Cleef (VC, if you're LFG in Westfall), the main boss of the Deadmines, the game's first major instance (can we consider Ragefire Caverns major? I'll let you guys decide that). There's a droprate of around 13%, so if you don't see one after eight runs through or so, you're just really unlucky. Keep in mind that it's BOP, though, so while it's tempting to run your high level alt through Deadmines to get it, you won't be able to pass it off to your twink... unless you bring a friend and have them reinvite you into the instance, of course. Ah, the pleasures of twinking!Auction Price: Would probably be high if you could actually put it on the AH. But instead you'll have to settle for 29s 64c to a vendor-- or just go ahead and DE it. After all, how else are you going to be able to do that +15 agility enchant on both your weapons?
