Help! I am at a plateau with my lock!! :(Follow

I'd moved into Zangarmarsh and started reaping nagas. :D

Almost all locks get frusterated in Hellfire, especially after coming from the likes of Sili and Winterspring, the monsters and resistances don't match up to our needs.

Luckily not all of TBC is like this.

My honest suggestion is to move on from Hellfire as soon as possible, this definatly doesn't mean skipping the quests as they are insane sources of exp and *amazing* item upgrades.

Do your quests, level to 62 or 63, and get outa there, that was my philosophy.

As said above, Zangamarsh is a much more friendly Lock-Zone.

Same here. I skipped a few though, mainly because I didnt do much instances at that level with her. To be honest I was afraid I will ***** up so I avoided them for quite long.
I managed to ding 70 without doing BEM and SMV quests at all and half of Netherstorm.
I still have lots of them waiting.

I did all the Hellfire and Zangar quests with my hunter that dinged 70 few days ago, I dinged in Nagrand without finishing it. She is already more revered CE than my lock. I did all lower Hellfire, Coilfang and Auchindon before 68. We did SV couple of times, Shadow Lab and Mech the other night.

Instances are not very interesting xp and money wise, but they teach you how to act in group situations and give you opportunity to get much better gear than quests and AH. And rep is very nice too.

Try to get a group going, kill xp may be lower but you can do lots of quests in little time and you can do Hellfire instances without much problem at that level.

Edited, Nov 11th 2007 8:19am by Sethy

Wow... I loved hp - since so many mobs are demons, you have great cc options.

I think I only have a few quests left in hp (cit), everything else I finished...

I would suggest a respec. With a lock it can make a huge difference and put a new spin on everything. Demonology can feel too much like a hunter as in send VW>dot>shoot>shoot. Take a look at the shadow compendium and find a playstyle that looks fun. Maybe mix two together and see how it goes.A second option would be to pvp for a while.

Hope this helps :)

I can understand that at 63 you're bored of Hellfire Peninsula. You should already have moved to Zang at 62. Zangarmarsh has been a great zone for me. It's an herbalist dream too. There are tons of easy quests to do there and the zone is not as huge as Hellfire.

Next is Terrokar which is okay imho.

But asap I would go to Nagrand. It's awesome and diversified. At 67 I'm now in the Blade's Edge Mountains and I miss Nagrand.

As for the instances, they get harder and harder and it's though to pugged them.

At your level, demon spec'd, I read in here about locks buying relatively cheap "of stamina" greens on the AH and getting inSANE hitpoints.

I decided what the heck, I'll try it. Spent 4 to 8 gold a piece, maybe a tad more for a dagger (which had good + sp dam). Ended up with over 11k hitpoints unbuffed.

My mana pool was tiny. I had less than 400 sp damage. But I was a grinding fool and did great.

Using the Drain Hunting method, I just sic'd Felg, Dotted up, tapped and drained.

Low sp dam = slow grinding rate? Actually, I did just fine. I did an experiment. Put on all the +damage gear I had (went from +300ish to about +500) and killed 4 or 5 talbuks, same level - same spell pattern. Averaged the time it took to kill. Took off my +dam gear and did the same on same exact lvl talbuks. Averaged the time it took to kill.

They were almost identical. Less than a second difference.

But w/ my +dam gear on, I had less than 8k hitpoints, maybe less than 7k. W/ my greens I had over 10k (eventually I got over 11k). That huge health pool meant survivability in outlands. I died less often; I could take more risks. And I kept up a decent, fast grinding rate using Drain Hunting.

AND when I went into BGs in my sixties, I was a monster. I didn't win every fight - that's impossible. But I remember getting stunlocked - and I just wouldn't die - and often killed rogues (and shocked them) only by having so many hitpoints.

Anyway, something to consider.

For leveling up to 70 I was.

I still have lots of hitponts, but I've been amping up my spell damage.

Been working on purples - mostly bg rewards/arena rewards. (these are high sta, decent int, really good resiliance, and high spell dam ---- what they are largely missing is spell penetration (or whatever it's called)).

When the patch goes, I think I'll be able to get a nice dagger or staff - and will have over 800 sp dam.

Sp dam IS important for many situations. For pvp and instancng - very important.

But while grinding up pve, I found spell damage - given how I was doing things (w/ felg) - was not worth it for me. For pve 60-70 I liked having the stamina.

And literally, when I tested the way I fought, adding 200 sp dam meant decreasing the length of a fight by less than a second. Having thousands of extra hit points meant a lot more. It meant tapping was easy - it hardly hurt me. I meant adds were easy - they didn't drop me - I could even tank a short while. And so on. But this was pve and grinding. Not fighting epic instance bosses, not pvping (I won by surviving in pvp - more sp dam would have been killer).

Eventually I'd like some purple pve armor. With heroic rep requirements coming down, I can start doing that. While I won't be a "strong" party member w/ 10,500 hp and 800 sp dam, I think I'll be adequate for heroics. What I'll mainly be missing is enough spell penetration, to lower bosse's resists to my damage spells. THat's what I'll be working on next (I have a few blues that do that, but not nearly enough).

Edited, Nov 12th 2007 5:04pm by IponemaGirl

Spell Hit isn't that hard to find if you use this. I think it is nearly immpossible to hit the cap(202) pre-kara, and some peices are from heroics. Here is the site I use:
http://wow-loot.com/gearguide.php?c=7

By selecting only Faction Rewards, BoP Craftables, and PvP Honor Rewards(Not Arena) and putting my preferred stas in this order:

Spell Hit
Shadow Spells
Spellpower
Stamina
Spell Crit
Intellect
Resiliance
Penetration
Health/5
Resist Arcane
Resist Fire
Resist Frost
Resist Nature
Resist Shadow
Fire Spells

I am able to get:
Spellpower: 402
Fire Spells: 0
Shadow Spells: 179
Spell Crit: 96
Spell Hit: 122
Health/5: 0
Intellect: 201
Stamina: 337
Resiliance: 39
Penetration: 15
Resist Arcane: 0
Resist Fire: 0
Resist Frost: 0
Resist Nature: 0
Resist Shadow: 0

This is before putting in gems, pre-heroics and pre-kara. Not to mention the lack of S1 Arena rewards as they are not in yet. It looks like only 402 Spell Power, but be sure and add in the Shadow Spell Power too and it's actually 582, with nothing socketed. Should easily be able to hit the recomended 600+ for kara, with a few points in Suppression to make up for the lack of Spell Hit.

Edited, Nov 12th 2007 5:28pm by Lathais