Choosing Which PvP Gear to Get First, Warlock Edition

I received an email today from a regular correspondent commenting on my recent CFN post on vanity and gear choice. He has been having a running argument with some DK friends about what slot was more important to upgrade first – shoulders or trinket.

The trinkets, my correspondent correctly points out, have a very high Resilience/Conquest Point ratio, and the on-use effect is very potent for burst kills. The shoulders have a lower R/CP ratio, and their secondary stat is Expertise – not something that Frost and Unholy DKs often go for. But invariably, the shoulders got chosen over the trinkets because they looked cooler. They’re the flashy upgrade, not necessarily the smart one.

But here’s the thing – how much do secondary stats matter? Is choosing the flashy upgrade a really bad move? Once you get past the primary stats and Resilience, how much are these secondary stats influencing decisions? I’ve maintained in my gearing guides that you should pick gear with your spec’s preferred secondary stat first, but is that always the case?

MODEL WHAT YOU KNOW

I turned to Ask Mr. Robot for help on DKs, but his stat weights confused me – sometimes Expertise was very good, other times it was very bad, and I couldn’t tell you why. There are nuances to each and every spec, and I realize I don’t know enough about DKs to really answer my correspondent’s question.

But I do know warlocks. And I know warlocks in PvP. So I built my model around warlocks, instead, with the hope that people who know more about other classes can adapt it to suit.

My approach is relatively simple:

• Gear can be evaluated by assigning weights to each primary and secondary statistic and totaling their values. This number is a quantitative representation of the relative value of the piece of gear for each spec.
• This gear value can then be compared to the cost of the gear, allowing you to determine how effective your purchase will be.
• By comparing the value/conquest point ratios between gear, you can determine which piece will be the best value.

Obviously, this method evaluates the full value of the gear, not the incremental upgrade value. You could easily modify it to suit a specific upgrade query by using the difference of the Conquest gear and your current gear instead of the full value of the gear. But for a starting model I think it’s okay to evaluate the full gear.

I took the stat weightings from Ask Mr. Robot because they were 1) easy to find and 2) relatively neutral. (Just keepin’ it real, yo.) I normalized them down to 0-1, and then added Resilience at 1.00, to reflect that I think it is as important as Intellect for PvP. I think it’s fair for all classes to do this – Resilience should be as important as your primary stat, not more, not less.

Once I had the stat weights in place, I then filled in all of the gear with values from the Ruthless Gladiator’s Felweave set. I left Hit in there, because it’s important, but I did skip Spell Penetration because there are several ways you can reach the Spell Pen cap, many of which can depend on your profession. Spell Power also presents a little bit of a tricky stat to weigh, but since weapons and trinkets use SP not Int I kept it in there and used the stats from the robot.

Here’s the spreadsheet if you’d like to follow along.

Applying the weights to the values on the gear, I came up with a normalized value for each spec (rows 23-26). This number doesn’t represent anything in game, really – it’s a relative measure of gear that only makes sense in context of the rest of the gear available.

I tossed in the Conquest Point cost for each item (line 21), which then lets us look at each piece in terms of purchase value it has – how much bang for the buck we get for spending Conquest Points. This is the value we really want to use to compare gear, because it’s obvious to see that some items have more oomph to them than others – that’s why they cost more. No, we want to compare based on what we get for our hard-earned CP.

My first pass through, I thought that I could stop here – getting a number for each item should be sufficient, right?

Well, not quite.

You’ll note that the weapons (MH/OH), trinkets, and pieces with Hit are better values than the set pieces. I think this has to do as much with the set bonuses not being included in each item’s budget, as with the set pieces costing substantially more points. These items also tend to have more sockets, which further diminishes the item’s onboard statistics. They should probably be higher than they are.

I initially ignored enchants, gems, and set bonuses because when you upgrade from PvP set to PvP set, they are static, while the rest of the gear changes around them. That’s the correct way to capture the upgrade model – ignore stats that don’t change or are not important (like Stamina) and only evaluate based on differences.

But this model only evaluates the gear, without reference to what we’re upgrading from. Even a character new to PvP is upgrading from something; they’re not coming into PvP stark naked.

The solution, of course, is to apply the same analysis to the gear currently worn by a character, and then to compare the difference between the two. That difference represents the value of the upgrade, which can then be divided by the cost of the upgrade.

So the correct model is:

• Assign a normalized value to each piece of gear based on stat weights for the spec and the amount of primary/secondary stats on the item. This includes both the current gear and the future gear.
• Get the value of the upgrade by taking the difference between the future gear and the current gear.
• Divide that upgrade value by the cost of the upgrade.
• Compare that value between the different gear slots to determine the most efficient upgrade path.

Since there’s no way to be accurate to any given Warlock’s upgrade situation, I chose the Season 10 Honor gear with S9 weapons as my baseline in the spreadsheet (rows 39-62), and then compared the Conquest set to the Honor set.

See, it’s important to think about gear purchases this way – you’re not purchasing a new set of gloves with +300 Intellect for 1650 Conquest Points, you’re purchasing an upgrade of +37 Intellect from your current gloves for 1650 Conquest Points. The key is to evaluate on the cost of the relative upgrade, not just the cost of the new gear.

Here’s how it looks.

As a key:

• Trinket 1 is the Ruthless Insignia of Dominance, which procs randomly.
• Trinket 2 is the Ruthless Badge of Dominance, which is an on-use “pump” trinket.
• The PvP Trinket is the faction Insignia.
• Ring 1 is the Ruthless Band of Accuracy, which gives Hit.
• Ring 2 is the Ruthless Band of Cruelty, which gives Crit.

When we change the model to evaluate based on upgrade value and not just purchase value, the set pieces – hands, legs, chest, helm, shoulders – are more attractive because we aren’t ignoring their sockets, socket bonuses, and set bonuses when comparing them to other items. We’re now comparing them to earlier versions of the same gear (which correctly nullifies the effects of those bonuses) and allows us to clearly prioritize upgrades.

I think it’s interesting to see how the upgrade lists differ between specs, all driven by the stat weights originally assigned. Items with Hit are preferable to those with Haste, and the relative value of Crit can play havoc with the lower areas of the ranking.

Since Intellect and Resilience are weighted the same, items with a high Resilience/CP ratio (like trinkets) place higher than you might expect. Take a look at the Intellect/CP and Resilience/CP of the Conquest items to see what I mean:

Since this is Warlock gear, Spellpower devalues the MH weapon’s Intellect budget, as well as the trinkets. And the Intellect / CP chart has a strong correlation to the number of sockets on a piece of gear.

But look at how much Resilience those trinkets give for their cost! If you’re trying to gear up for PvP and improve your survivability, trinkets are the way to go. The set pieces weigh in favorably too here, and that’s before the set bonus kicks in.

INTERPRETING THE RESULTS

Now, all these numbers are well and good, but PvP is not just about numbers – it’s about performance. Is the random proc of one trinket better than the on-use effect of another? If we’re to just evaluate it by the numbers, absolutely yes. One gives more value for the CP (and more DPS, incidentally) than the other.

But this is PvP. Affliction warlocks, for example, are not known for their burst, and having an on-demand trinket that can be used to burn down an opponent at the right time is critical.

I think it’s interesting to see how dependent all this is on the stat weights you choose at the beginning. If you were to go on a straight primary stat / Resilience evaluation, you wouldn’t see a lot of the subtle differences in the gear pieces. Small changes to your stat weights will have a big impact on the gear’s purchase values, so these lists should not be set in stone. They are absolutely dynamic and need to be adjusted to your specific situation – which you should do.

Generally speaking, the pieces high on these lists either have a lot of the primary stats warlocks want – Intellect, Spellpower, or Resilience – or they have the secondary stats – Spell Hit, Haste. When all other things are equal, choose the gear with the best secondary stat – but it’s interesting to see that all other things are not always equal.

It’s nice to see that my general rule of thumb holds – get the stuff that has your secondary stat first – but you should also look at the rest of the item’s budget and cost when choosing what to upgrade next, and use your head.

All those disclaimers aside: the MH/OH weapons are always excellent buys.

VANITY PURCHASES

Getting back to the original question: are players who upgrade their shoulders first doing so out of vanity, or out of logic? If the secondary stat on them isn’t the best one for your spec, how important is that?

I think there’s a strong argument to be made that the shoulders are not a good first buy for warlocks – you get a bigger boost of Resilience from the trinkets.

But there could be other reasons to get them which outweigh the numbers. Perhaps it is important for the player to show others that the character is progressing into the next season of gear. Perhaps the new shoulders are a bigger upgrade due to not having a complete set of last season’s gear. Perhaps the player just likes the look of them! That’s all okay.

It’s okay because eventually, with enough time and focus, you can get all the gear, and it won’t matter which order you got it in.

However, when you are sitting there at the vendor, wondering what to get next – don’t be so quick to upgrade only the visible pieces.

New shoulders are great and all that, but there are other pieces that probably have more bang for the buck.

Like, you know, gloves. 🙂

Happy shopping!

Thursday Reading

Hey! You!  Yeah, you, down the street there.

Don’t hide from me, I won’t bite. Craggle Wobbletop, at your service! I sell toys! You like toys, don’t you?

Oh.

You want epic PvP gear? You can go to Old Town for that.

Oh, you want epic raiding gear? Oh. Old Town for that, too.

How about a Paper Zeppelin? They don’t give you repair bills.

No?

Oh.

How about some blog posts to read, then?

• I could link to pretty much every post that Lara does over at Root and Branch, but I think you’ll enjoy A License to Print Money, which is about leveling entirely through PvP and the unexpected benefits (and drawbacks!) of that process.
• Zinn has a great post about the virtue of patience and Paragon’s H-25 Rag kill. This, so many times this. Patience, perseverance – these are the way to success.
• Icedragon rebuilds her UI for Cataclysm with some beautiful results. I love how she customizes each one for each character.
• Fulguralis has a nice post up about Warlock Trinkets, a subject near and dear to many of your hearts. Also, he wrote a book! Check it out!
• This is an older post, but Onike talks about Teamwork and the shift of PvP philosophy between Seasons 8 and 10.
• Vidyala has a problem with achievements. Achievements are an interesting compulsion. I should write more about my own issues with them.
• Anexxia has a bittersweet piece of short fiction up about her own stepping back from raiding, in A Sort of Homecoming in Brill.
• Speaking of the undead, Rades’s undead DK has a problem with her plate mail bikini. I don’t like it because it doesn’t match, but Rades has some more to say about it than just that. 🙂
• Psynister takes on Trial Account Twink Professions with his usual depth and insight. (c.f. GTG’s article for an introduction to the concept).
• Razz over at Planet of the Hats talks about Raiding Fatigue, which is hitting home for a lot of players right now. Spinks has a related, insightful post on Auction House burnout.
• Zel has a very funny non-WoW piece up on Twigisms. For the WoW parents out there.
• Syl talks about wiping expansions off the table, something I’ve been thinking about recently. I think there’s a larger discussion to be had here about the expansion model, the concept of endgame, and how we interact with “content.”
• I rather enjoyed listening to Ophelie and Oestrus on the latest episode of the Double O podcast, with Vidyala and Vosskah. That podcast is picking up steam quickly.
• In something that has become all too common, Beru considers walking away from Warcraft in The Straw. I have a lot of sympathy for Beru, as you’ll see in the comments.
• On a sadder note, Alas takes a few pages from the Complete Guide to Not Giving a Fuck and is taking a break from blogging. I’ve enjoyed her WoW Pride and Prejudice posts for some time, and while I’m sad to see them stop, I’m glad to see people take control of their lives. This is a game, it should be fun.
• And finally, my good friend Psynister talks about his challenges in staying motivated to play Warcraft in Three-Legged Stools. This is a tough time for players right now, and Psynister paints a great picture of his struggles with the game.

If you follow me on Twitter, you may have noticed that I’ve started a blogging experiment on Posterous – Cynwise’s Field Notes – for shorter, more informal posts. To quote the introduction:

I take a lot of pride in the posts that go up on my main websites, but they tend to be big – really big – and I also try to keep them very topical. It’s a good thing to be topical and thorough, but for a while now I’ve wanted a more informal place to post, someplace without a lot of bells and whistles, with a little more room than Twitter but without the pressure of focus that both CBM and GTG have.

Like my field notes, this is very much an experiment. I’m at a strange place with Warcraft now, so I offer no guarantees about content or direction. I like Posterous (really neat interface!) but it’s no WordPress replacement. This is just a simple little site that takes my emails and turns them into posts.

I’m not moving, but I am definitely keeping CBM focused on PvP, warlockery, and other guides. I have no idea where I’m going with CFN, but … well, I hope you find some of the posts interesting.

Enjoy!

On Vanity, Gear, and the Appearance of Competence

All things are vanity, says my favorite book of the bible, and toons are no different.

I spent some time tonight cleaning up my warrior – moving gear sets into the bank, getting new gear sets crafted, picking out just the right tabard to go with the new gear, getting enchants, packing stuff out of the bank to vendor; the usual stuff.

I realized that I want to twink her a little bit, which is why I’m putting effort into her now. It’s been 20 levels since my last pause, and I want to spend some time in both dungeons and PvP to catch up. This isn’t a permanent stop, I don’t think – I’m not going to repeatedly level Engineering to 450 for a chance at Synapse Springs, for instance – but I want to get my PvE and PvP setups straight, get my skills straightened out, and then move on.

I digress.

I spent a fair amount of time considering the appearance of my characters tonight, and why appearance matters. Not physical attractiveness, mind you – but how gear influences how I perceive the toon. If they look put together, I am inclined to think that they’re competent and good. If they don’t match, if their gear is a mishmash of different styles, I think less of them.

Now the interesting thing is that I think this is cyclical, not causal, and that while looking put-together helps me feel better about a toon, it’s probably a symptom of actual competence and care for the toon, not the cause of it. If I feel like I’m doing well with someone, I’ll take the time to keep them organized and neat. Action bars will be pruned, glyphs chosen, all specs fleshed out, professions maxed – and gear tidied up.

While this is generally a positive feedback loop, sometimes it turns ugly. When there’s no good looking gear available, I start avoiding them on the selection screen. I look at my DK in his collection of vaguely conquistadorian Cata greens and blues and go… That looks awful. You look awful. I’ll go play someone else.

The outfit doesn’t encourage me to play. I could go and fix it by leveling, but let’s face it – it’s all downhill once you leave Light’s Hope on a DK.

Actually, that’s an interesting point. Starter area clothes are usually attractive, if simple. Some are downright gorgeous! When you roll a new toon, you look good.

It’s only later when your outfit falls apart.

I’ve noticed this on Cynwise, too. I get disturbed when she doesn’t visually match. Upgrading from Bloodthirsty to Vicious last season was painful – I tried to make sure the visual disruption in gear was limited, and when it started (blue shoulders, green robe, how does it work?) I replaced the offending visual elements first.

I hate not looking neat and put together.

Cynderblock is an interesting case. She’s a hodgepodge of gear, but finding the right outfit to quest in (not her BiS gear) made it much more enjoyable. (She quests in a Brewfest Dress and Lucky Fishing Hat.)

This isn’t very deep – in fact, it’s about as shallow as you can get, judging a character by how their clothes look – but in looking at my toons, I think it’s important to acknowledge. It’s also important to realize you might just need a new look to revitalize interest in a toon.

I’m okay with how the Brutal gear looks on Ash now – the Darnassus Tabard pulled the outfit together.

But I really hope I get Cynwulf, my DK, to 85 so he can have some better clothing options. There’s just not a lot at 84 worth wearing. 😦

On Looking Like Myself

So last night my warrior dinged 70, and off I went to get my NEW SHINY PvP gear. Brual Gladiator gear, with actual Resilience, here I come.

Wait, I look like WHAT now? That’s like a loli goth bondage girl out to cause trouble. That’s like an extra from Enterprise. That’s like … what?

I’ve spent the last 10 levels looking like this a badass force in service of the Alliance:

To something that is very, very different.

Setting aside my outrage (which is mostly for effect), there’s something dramatic that shifts when you modify a character’s gear substantially, especially when the gear … oh, I don’t know, matches? Coordinates? Looks decent?

There’s an argument to be made for piecemeal replacement of gear, that it conveys more of a sense of growth than wholesale replacement every 10 levels.

There’s another argument to be made that DEAR GOD OUTLAND CLOWN CLOTHES CLASH LET ME OUT thank goodness OH GOD NORTHREND CLOTHES ARE ALL BROWN GIVE ME COLOR AGAIN.

Ahem.

There’s another argument to be made that looking like a respectable, functioning member of society who can dress him or herself matters more than gradual evolution of a look over time.

(Surely, I’m not the only one who upgrades gear based on looks as well as stats?)

(Heirlooms are a problem, too. How the FRAK are you supposed to match leggings to those chestpieces consistently? And the BOOTS???)

Also, the new Armory. We have to talk.

Your export function is great. Look!

However, the lack of posability is not so great.

Especially when your shield is larger than you are.

Doesn’t that look … uncomfortable?

A Guide to Trial Account Twinking

With Blizzard removing the 10-day time limit on trial accounts, it has become possible to gear up characters to participate in Warcraft PvP on a free-to-play basis. The limits on these new Starter Edition accounts are severe, but overcoming limitations is part of the fun of creating a twink.

Please note: Blizzard doesn’t support Starter Edition twinks.

If you choose to make one, you’ll be exploring a lot of arbitrary limits as to what can and can’t be done. This can be a lot of fun, but be prepared for limits you encounter. The challenge of overcoming these limits is the point of this project.

WHAT IS A TWINK?

A twink is a character in a MMORPG, like World of Warcraft, which has been outfitted with the best gear possible for their level, often above and beyond that a normal character would obtain during the leveling process. Experience gain is usually turned off for twinks so as to allow them to continue acquiring gear and items without gaining levels. These characters are then used in both PvP and PvE, depending on the player’s desires.

In Warcraft, there are currently two types of twinks: XP-off and expansion twinks. XP-off twinks have turned off experience gain in-game by paying 10 gold to the Experience Eliminators in Stormwind or Orgrimmar. Expansion twinks are limited by the type of account attached to the WoW software, not anything done within the game itself. e.g. A player without the Wrath of the Lich King expansion will not be able to level characters past level 70 on that account, but will be able to gain all gear from the original and Burning Crusade expansions.

Trial account twinks are a type of expansion twink. Trial accounts are limited to level 20, so characters on these accounts can quest, run dungeons, and engage in PvP combat to improve their skills and gear without leveling further. Because of the restrictions on trial accounts, trial account twinks will have the following characteristics.

• Level 20 (so normal ground mounts are available.)
• Cannot have any primary profession over 100.
• Enchants are extremely limited.
• Gear is primarily quest rewards, PvP rewards, and dungeon drops.
• BoEs are possible but require random drops.
• Heirlooms are possible but require a lot of Honor Points.
• No buff foods.

Despite these limitations, trial account twinks can still be competitive in PvP, and can be solid explorers and dungeon runners. You can build a very good character with a trial account.

PVP BRACKETS AND TRIAL ACCOUNT TWINKS

Level 20 characters who queue up for PvP will be placed in the level xp-off 20-24 bracket. This means that trial account twinks will be facing characters who may be higher level than they are. That’s the bad news.

The worse news is that because your twink’s level is limited by your account type, you will be playing with other twinks in the XP-off bracket. The competition will therefore be harder, as you will be fighting with paid account twinks, whose access to the best gear, enchantments, and consumables in the game gives them a significant edge.

The good news is the sheer number of Starter Edition players in the 20-24 XP-off bracket ensures that games are not completely lopsided. Your skill still matters.

The availability of Heirloom gear – bind-to-account gear that scales with level, normally purchased by players once they have reached the highest levels of the game, to be passed on to other characters – means that you will often be dealing with players who are substantially better geared than your twink. If they make an effort to gear up and enchant their items, even leveling characters can and will surpass a trial account twink in ability and performance.

I’ve constructed several sample characters on Wowhead so you can see the difference between trial account twinks and other characters in the bracket.

Trial Account Level 20 Twink
Paid Account Level 20 Twink
Paid Account Level 24 w/ Heirlooms

The first two are level 20 twinks, to give you an idea how having access to BoE gear from the AH, enchants, and heirlooms influences a character. The trial account lacks those elements, but has the best quest and dungeon gear available. Both have stacked hit to address competing against level 24 characters. (I skipped the Arena Grand Master trinket, though both twinks could of course get it.)

You’ll note that the level 20 paid account twink outclasses the trial account twink by a substantial amount. It’s an interesting comparison.

The level 24 character represents a more accurate picture of what a geared PvP toon would look like in the leveling bracket, or just entering the twink bracket. It’s not fully twinked, instead using a reasonable selection of dungeon gear, heirlooms, and cheap enchants. This gear build would do very well in the bracket.

Locking your XP at earlier levels is no longer possible. You cannot use a Starter Edition to participate in the 10-14 or 15-19 XP-off brackets. [ed: Previous section on level 19 twinking removed.]

Next, let’s look at how to build a trial account twink.

BUILDING A TRIAL ACCOUNT TWINK

The fun part about making a twink is figuring out what kind of gear you can get for them. Let’s look at the limits of trial accounts again.

• Trial account twinks can’t visit the AH, so BoE gear has to be farmed by the twink, leaving the player at the mercy of very low drop rates.
• Similarly, they can’t trade with other characters, so the only crafted gear available is gear they make themselves.
• Skills are limited to 100, so most patterns are just not available.
• They can’t get mail, so sending heirlooms from a different Battle.net account is not possible.

So what is available?

In order of approximate ease of acquisition:

• Quest gear (rewarded by quest givers)
• PvP gear (purchased with Honor Points from PvP vendors)
• Dungeon drops
• Cloaks and belts from the Satchel of Helpful Goods, from running random dungeons through the Dungeon Finder
• Fishing gear
• Crafted gear made by the character (up to level 100)
• Heirloom gear (purchased with Honor Points from PvP and PvE vendors)
• BoE gear (directly looted by the character)

Quest gear is relatively straightforward – by seeking out quests which give powerful rewards, your character can get very good gear. Many quests are faction-specific, so be sure to check that that GREAT piece of gear you’ve spotted is actually available to you!

PvP rewards are purchased from vendors around battlegrounds and in your faction’s capital city. Trial account twinks should look at the necklaces, rings, weapons, and trinkets available at the Warsong Gulch vendors in Ashenvale: Illiyana Moonblaze for Alliance, Kelm Hargunth for the Horde. This gear is purchased with Honor Points, gained from participating in battlegrounds.

All twinks will want to purchase a PvP trinket from the PvP vendors in their capital city. The Insignia of the Horde / Insignia of the Alliance remove movement-imparing effects once every 5 minutes and can make the difference between victory and defeat.

Dungeon drops are another reliable source of gear for trial account twinks. Blue-quality gear drops off the bosses of the dungeons available to level 20 characters, especially from Shadowfang Keep & Gnomergan.

If you run random dungeons using the dungeon finder, the cloaks and belts from the Satchel of Helpful Goods will be some of the best gear you can get in those slots. The Tumultuous Cloak of Stamina is probably your best drop, but others may be more appropriate to your class. For some classes, there are a few belts that drop from dungeons which outclass the belts from the Satchels, but the belts are generally very good.

Fishing has a few rewards which can benefit trial account twinks. The Lucky Fishing Hat is a reward for catching a rare fish in the Strangethorn Fishing Extravaganza, and the Weather-beaten Fishing Hat is a random reward from the daily fishing quest in major cities.

Due to the limits on professions, crafted gear generally is not as good as the gear you’ll find from other places because you have to make it yourself, and leveling many of them without the Auction House is a feat in and of itself. A notable exception is the Flying Tiger Goggles from Engineering, as they are one of the few helms available to trial account twinks. But quest, pvp and dungeon gear generally is superior.

Bringing up the list of possible gear choices are BoEs (bind-on-equip) items and Heirlooms. Both of these are really hard to get, and only established twinks will likely even consider getting them. Normally, BoEs would be purchased off the Auction House, because they are rare, random drops. Since trial account twinks can’t use the AH, they will have to farm for them themselves, which is really just hoping random chance smiles on you.

Heirlooms are a little easier to get if you’re willing to put in a lot of time on your twink. These cost thousands of Honor Points to purchase – 2 to 3k each – and I’m not 100% positive that trial accounts can even purchase them. (Level 20 characters on paid accounts can.)

While PvP-oriented Heirlooms are available for direct purchase with Honor Points, you can also purchase PvE heirlooms by converting your Honor Points to Justice Points at a 3/2 rate. If you play a trial account twink long enough in the battlegrounds, this gear may be worth it for an upgrade!

One final word on gear: the Arena Grand Master is the best trinket you can get for either the 19 or 20 PvP brackets. I have a guide to getting it on this site with more information.

HOW DO I FIND SPECIFIC GEAR?

Wowhead is a twink’s best friend for finding gear. Learn how to use their database to search for specific types of gear that you can use for your character. Use their filters to search for specific types of gear – for example, here’s a search of all Cloth armor rewarded by quests, optimized for an Affliction warlock.

I recommend creating a profile on Wowhead to store the gear you’re considering in a profile, much like I did above, so that you can create a dynamic list of gear that you think will work well for your twink.

BAGS

Storage space can be a real challenge for starter edition characters. There are several sources of 16-slot bags available.

• City Faction Bags: each city’s quartermaster sells a 16-slot bag (e.g. the Stormwind Satchel) which can be unique-equipped for under 2g. Each bag requires Revered with a given city’s faction, which can be obtained either through questing or running dungeons while wearing the appropriate city’s tabard. City Quartermasters can be found near the flight points of each city.
• Stormpike Bags: Alliance Players have access to two quivers, the Harpy Hide Quiver and Gnoll Skin Bandolier, which can be purchased for 50 Honor Points each from the Stormpike Supply Officers near or in Alterac Valley. These bags will display on your Hunter character on the selection screen due to their former status as ammunition pouches. There doesn’t appear to be a Horde equivalent.

In addition to these 16-slot bags, there are 14-slot bags available from bag vendors for 9g 60s, and another 14-slot bag available as a quest reward from the Darkmoon Faire (the Darkmoon Satchel). These bags are good for filling out your trial account twink’s 3 available bank slots.

(Thanks to Goodpeeps @ Moon Guard for the tip about the AV bags.)

CONSUMABLES AND PROFESSIONS

Updated with information about secondary professions.

Primary professions like Engineering, Enchanting, and Skinning are limited to skill level 100 on a trial account. Secondary professions like Cooking, Fishing, and First Aid are not, so effort in those skills will generally repay your time investment.

Most twinks go into battle with a supply of Rumsey Rum Black Label on hand due to its excellent Stamina buff. However, it’s normally purchased in bulk from a Burning Crusade dungeon (which trial accounts can’t reach), purchased from the AH (which trial accounts can’t use), or fished up randomly from around the world (which gives you one at a time.)

So you’re probably not going to be able to have 4 stacks of rum on hand for your twink. Instead, look to Cooking to supply your food and drink needs. Cooking 100 gives you a variety of recipes which can create food which gives up to +6 Stamina, which is 60 extra health. Every little bit helps.

Another secondary profession, First Aid, can give you the ability to use Wool Bandages to heal yourself once a minute for 161 damage over 7 seconds. One of the quirks of First Aid is that you can use better bandages than you can make, so while you can use up to a Silk Bandage with First Aid 100, you can’t create it without First Aid 150. So you’re stuck with a weak bandage as a trial account twink.

While you can learn any two primary professions for your trial account twink, only a few will give any benefit.

• Skinning grants Master of Anatomy, for +3 Critical Strike rating.
• Mining grants Toughness, for +3 Stamina.
• Herbalism grants Lifeblood, for +15 Haste rating for 20 seconds, every 2 minutes.
• Enchanting allows you to enchant your gear, but with very minor enchants (about 25 health, +3 Intellect, +1 Strength/Agility.

My preference would be for Herbalism and Skinning, as they will both increase your DPS a small amount. Lifeblood is good for giving your damage a burst, useful for when you are trying to kill an opponent quickly, and the passive Critical Strike rating from Master of Anatomy is a nice bonus.

CLASS SELECTION

Play the class you like. If you’ve never played before, pick the one that appeals the most to you. There are classes that are more powerful than others in PvP at level 20, but any class is workable and can be fun.

This advice seems trite, but I’ve seen people take classes which were universally discounted in a bracket and use them to tear apart the place. I’ve seen folks play flavor of the month classes and fail badly at them.

Pick the one you have the most fun playing.

MORE RESOURCES

• Wowhead is my Warcraft database of choice. Their search filters are fantastic and can give you great gear advice. Perculia has an excellent guide to F2P accounts with very detailed gear advice.
• The Twinkinfo Forums have recently started up a Free to Play Forum exclusively for trial account twinks. Twinkinfo has a lot of good gearing advice and an active twink community.
• Psynister has a great guide to trial account professions, including a guide to leveling, and dropping, and leveling, and dropping…

A community of trial account twinks is already springing up. It will be interesting to see what becomes of the Free to Play WoW twinks in the months to come.

Good luck, and happy twinking!

On Fudging It

The game systems that we play tend to shape our thinking about other games, about how systems are constructed, etc. etc. etc.. I’m sure Thomas Khun would be proud of this analogy, if I could piece it together.

I used to design RPGs back in the day. Once you start looking at the underlying systems, they’re quite interesting to break down and analyze, but one of my all-time favorites is FUDGE. And not just because of the food reference.

FUDGE uses, essentially, fuzzy logic to go ahead and determine the outcome of actions. There’s a scale of relative adjectives that it uses to rate … well, just about everything, really, and I’m finding that I’m using it more and more to describe Warcraft.

So here you go:

• Superb
• Great
• Good
• Fair
• Medicore
• Poor
• Terrible

You assign an adjective to a task or a skill. Let’s say your character is good with a pistol, which represents their average skill over time. You can make a Good shot more often than not.

Fudge uses funny dice – d6s with 2 +s, 2 -s, and 2 blank sides. You roll 4 (or 1 or 6 or 10 or whatever) and tally up the plusses and minuses when adding random chance into an action. You modify the quality of your action accordingly – if you have a net +1, your shot goes from Good to Great. If you get a net -3, it’s a Poor shot.

Anyhow.

FUDGE is a great RPG, hugely flexible, but the remarkable thing is that I find that I can describe most other game systems with it.

See, a lot of the mathematical exactness that game systems strive for can yield counterintuitive results. They can also bog players down in too many numbers or rules (Laws of the Night Revised edition, I’m looking at YOU) that take away from the RPG aspect of the game.

So when a game starts going cattywumpus – c.f. Warcraft characters at level 84 – I revert to the FUDGE scale to see what’s going on.

For example, the problem with leveling from 79-80 in Wrath, and then again at 83-84 inf Cataclysm, is that your Superb characters rapidly decline down the scale to Fair, or even Mediocre. Good toons go Poor. Fair toons are Terrible at 84. The scaling is brutal, and only the gear available at level 85 starts bringing characters back up to their former selves.

Going from “I kiled the Lich King!” to “I am having problem handling 4 Dragonmaw Orcs at a time” may be mathematically necessary to handle stat inflation, but it introduces cognitive dissonance and player dissatisfaction. It’s not that the 80-85 leveling is hard, but rather that our characters feel lessened by the experience.

I’m going to refer back to the Fudge Scale a lot, so now you know what I’m babbling about when I trot it out.

Five Reasons Why Uldum is a bit of a Drag

1. It’s really hard to take pygmies as a viable threat to an ancient, yet still functioning, civilization.
2. No chance to present Harrison Jones an opportune Death Coil to thank him for calling Cynwise “a pretty young thing.”
3. Level 83 Troll Druid tried to gank me in the Ramkahen courtyard. Really? REALLY? Guards there are SO lacking in a sense of humor.
4. What, I don’t get experience for watching this cutscene?
5. I3-5: Desert of Desolation was better. (But to be fair, pretty much any module Tracy Hickman wrote was exceptional.)

On Why I Left Google Plus

This morning I deleted my Google Plus account.

I’d seen a post or two of people using Google Plus and getting their accounts suspended, but this morning I woke up to this article which compliles a lot of them, and points out a disturbing trend – that if you try to obscure your personal information in G+, you can get banned for it.

And not just banned, but you can lose all Google services.

I didn’t really care about G+ – it was interesting, I enjoyed seeing what was going on there, even if it’s a little strange to me. (I do not use Facebook, though I have an account. An IRL account, not a Warcraft account.) But I do care about my gmail account, and my youtube channel – I don’t think I have all of the source files for those videos anymore, and I’d hate to lose them.

So, since pseudonyms seem to be a risk for one’s entire Google account, I deleted G+. 

In retrospect I shouldn’t have said “I’m leaving because I use a psuedonym and don’t want you shutting down my entire google account” in the “why are you leaving?” form, but … hey. I did. Whoops.

It’s pretty sad when you start feeling afraid of a company which promises to do no evil.

Am reconsidering my relationship with google now, which makes me a little sad. They’re a good company with some great products… but I don’t like companies who scare me with their policy decisions.

I’m not trying to lead a crusade against them. Lots of people will no doubt have no problems with staying on G+, and I’m really fine with that. But my separation of Cyn/not-Cyn needs to hold, and I’m not going to use it in public with my real name.

On Prot Warrior Keybinds and the Lure of Level 70 Twinking

I need to start thinking about how to better use the Naga with my Prot warrior.

Revenge! Shield Slam! Victory Rush! Charge!

(Defensive cooldowns are all on the Shift modifier.)

Also, is it bad that I’m thinking of twinking her at level 70 so I can tank BC Heroics at level? Is that bad? My druid is already xp-locked at 70, do I really need another?

Man. I should just get her to 85 and then start another alt. 😦

On Thrall and Leaving Space for PCs

So I unexpectedly got an ebook of Thrall and read it last night. Good read, enjoyable enough if I didn’t think about it too much. It felt a bit like reading Forgotten Realms novels when I was younger – enjoyable romp through lands with familiar characters.

I really found myself wondering about how I fit into this world, though. The narrative of the player character is difficult to construct when the main storyline is always carried by the same few NPCs – an advantage of the FR books was that the world allowed for both, that no one clique of NPCs defined the world. They may have defined a part of it, especially those covered by a given author, but not the whole thing.

Azeroth feels smaller, somehow. Not in context of the stories, but in the space inbetween, the space where PCs live. I enjoyed reading about Thrall, but it’s hard for me to reconcile the events in book with events in game, with the adventures of Cynwise. It’s like the only way to participate with the meta story is to hang out with the cast of demigods.

And that thought triggers all sorts of Mary Sue alarms in my head. 😦