Misc Beta Smatterings

I unfortunately, have not felt the beta-bug bite in awhile. I did put some effort in last weekend and managed to drag myself up to level 66, but it's been a chore getting through the Nagrand quests: most of them are pretty boring quest chains: i.e. "kill 30x elementals... okay now go kill 30x of another type of elemental..." Lots of dirty work.

They have raised the level cap on the beta server to 70, and flying mounts are in game now. In Nagrand there is a quest that lets you ride a netherdrake around the legion's encampment scouting it out. I don't think I really looked at the camp much, but took the time out to just screenshot pictures of myself on the dragon's back. Rumor has it, in the caverns of time you get to ride a bronze dragon around in one quest.

I finally managed to finish the mana tombs of Auchoudon. I got invited to a pretty kickass group with a priest and warrior that were geared out in Naxx equipment. We still had a little trouble with the first boss, mostly because people were new to the encounter. The giant voidwalker guy dropped a 'Creepjacker', a very nice mainhand fist weapon, which was an upgrade for me: finally something other than my old Quiraji Sacrificial Dagger. I was finally in a group that beat Avalancheon, and he dropped a nice caster cloak which went to the priest: pretty much the tactic was the same as every other attempt we hit him with, we just had better healing and tanking this time.

Once you get past Avalancheon, there are some big nasty pulls, but nothing unmanageable. In one room you open up a teleporter, which gates the Consortium engineers in, who begin systematically looting the place. You can turn in your kill-quest here and pick up an escort quest (which we decided to save for later).

The final boss in the mana tombs is this big Nexus Prince guy, who constantly summons up to three of these beacons. The becons eventually teleport in more tomb raiders, so you have to focus on DPSing them constantly. We wiped about four times learning the encounter, and when we finally got him, he dropped a bow which was an upgrade for nobody. +1 shard.

Behind the boss is a jump down into the first room, so you can exit the dungeon in a hasty manner, however we chose to backtrack and do the escort quest instead. For the most part, the NPC walks you through a series of the usual staged ambushes while being a big dick to you. Finally, we got back out to the first big chamber where Pandemonius normally is, and everything had respawned. Not so good. Determined to try and make it past the 9+ mobs, the warrior pulled the group on the left while I pulled the group on the right. Not so great. ;(

Other than that, I've done a few nice sequenced quests in Terrokar Forest. There is a scout that the Arrokra have abducted, and this sequence involved quite a bit of berry picking and ingredient gathering in order to make it past the magical barrier in their city. The final quest reward was a pair of gloves that once socketed with gems were an upgrade from my Nightslayer Gloves. (Although they were a lot more ugly.)

Rogues now have 'cloak of shadows' as a baseline lvl 66 spell. It's freaking awesome. With a 2min reuse timer, I'm using it frequently to scrub off monster dots, as well as busting it out when kick is still cooling down.

With the Creepjacker in my mainhand now, I've switched my build quite a bit into a subterfuge/assassination spec. It is basically a dodge/hemo build that has both dirty deeds and improved cheapshot and pumps out a 5pt cheapshot in no time flat. It works a bit better than the mutilate build vs. elementals, but is much less interesting to play. It really tears arse vs. green mobs with dodge/setup feeding combo points into the mix.