I am new to WoW and had never played this type of game until a month ago. I am hooked and want to improve my skills. Right now I have a lvl 29 pally that is straight out of the box. All his gear has been picked up in quests from bosses or drops from mobs, no enchants either. So as far as gear goes...and probably fighting skill as well...I can't stand toe-to-toe with most players in the bg's. So here is my question, if I enjoy PvE should I bother with bg's...and if so, why or why not.
Just as a side note...never knew what a twink was until about a week ago, and I don't understand the problem. I spent 29 years in the US Army, with tours in both Iraq and Afghanistan, (yes, I am over 40) and I'll tell you what, every time I went into combat I wanted the best gear I could lay my hands on. Only problem is, in WoW during the first month I have been playing, I have only managed to make about 80G mining and picking herbs and I am saving for my mount so I have not spent it on gear. So how the heck do you get 1500G to spend gearing out a twink!
Anyway, like I said, I am hooked on WoW and want to be the best player I can be, so your advice on bg's and ways to improve my skills would be appreciated.
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Welcome to the game.
First off, the people that have tons of money are generally being fed money via a high level toon. Making money at the level cap (currently lvl 70, but soon to be lvl 80) is very very easy. Making thousands of gold is easy. So they make all this money, then use it to buy gear for their lower level alts. Thus - the twinks are born. :)
Unless you have a lvl 70 giving you money, don't even bother trying to get the money for the gear. Save your money. Buy your mount. You'll need another 600g once you hit lvl 60 (epic land mount). And another 900g once you hit lvl 70 (flying mount).
That being said, if you really really want decent gear, try looking up the quests here in Allakhazam. It can help guide you to quests that give you great rewards. The nice part is that you will be leveling WHILE getting good gear.
First off, the people that have tons of money are generally being fed money via a high level toon. Making money at the level cap (currently lvl 70, but soon to be lvl 80) is very very easy. Making thousands of gold is easy. So they make all this money, then use it to buy gear for their lower level alts. Thus - the twinks are born. :)
Unless you have a lvl 70 giving you money, don't even bother trying to get the money for the gear. Save your money. Buy your mount. You'll need another 600g once you hit lvl 60 (epic land mount). And another 900g once you hit lvl 70 (flying mount).
That being said, if you really really want decent gear, try looking up the quests here in Allakhazam. It can help guide you to quests that give you great rewards. The nice part is that you will be leveling WHILE getting good gear.
Welcome to the game, and to the Allakhazam forums!
If you enter a BG at level 29 (or 39, 49, etc.) in reasonably appropriate gear, you should be in decent shape due to the numbers of toons at the lower end of the bracket joining. While there will be players who have spent a lot on their twink, a toon with twice your health who does three times the damage, you can try to avoid those opponents and look to create your own mismatches. You may be able to kill a lvl 20 player in three shots, for example, so do it, and let the twinks on your team match up against the enemy twinks.
For most of us, Battlegrounds are a fun change of pace from the normal leveling/questing experience. Alliance players in particular like to hit the BGs while leveling because at level 70, Warsong Gulch and Arathi Basin wins are few and far between. The "marks" you receive at the end of each BG match can be used to buy gear from PVP vendors, and they don't care what level you earned them at. I also credit the BGs for teaching me much more about my class than I would ever have learned from the PVE world alone. For example, you'll perform much better in BGs if you learn to turn with your mouse rather than the arrow keys on your keyboard and if you learn to effectively hot-key frequently used abilities to your keyboard rather than clicking icons on your screen with your mouse pointer.
As a final note, 80G is a tad low for a level 29 toon with two gathering professions, especially with the crazy money that Inscriptionists are paying for low level flowers... Are you selling all of your herbs and ores at the AH at a reasonable price? Are you drastically undercutting the going rate? Are you collecting grey items that drop from mobs and selling those to vendors? That's a lot of money you're leaving on the ground if you're not. If bag space is an issue for you, then you want to invest in a set of Netherweave Bags, 16-slot containers crafted by tailors that usually sell for 6-7g each. They really will pay for themselves by allowing you to stay in the field longer than you otherwise would.
Best of luck to you!
If you enter a BG at level 29 (or 39, 49, etc.) in reasonably appropriate gear, you should be in decent shape due to the numbers of toons at the lower end of the bracket joining. While there will be players who have spent a lot on their twink, a toon with twice your health who does three times the damage, you can try to avoid those opponents and look to create your own mismatches. You may be able to kill a lvl 20 player in three shots, for example, so do it, and let the twinks on your team match up against the enemy twinks.
For most of us, Battlegrounds are a fun change of pace from the normal leveling/questing experience. Alliance players in particular like to hit the BGs while leveling because at level 70, Warsong Gulch and Arathi Basin wins are few and far between. The "marks" you receive at the end of each BG match can be used to buy gear from PVP vendors, and they don't care what level you earned them at. I also credit the BGs for teaching me much more about my class than I would ever have learned from the PVE world alone. For example, you'll perform much better in BGs if you learn to turn with your mouse rather than the arrow keys on your keyboard and if you learn to effectively hot-key frequently used abilities to your keyboard rather than clicking icons on your screen with your mouse pointer.
As a final note, 80G is a tad low for a level 29 toon with two gathering professions, especially with the crazy money that Inscriptionists are paying for low level flowers... Are you selling all of your herbs and ores at the AH at a reasonable price? Are you drastically undercutting the going rate? Are you collecting grey items that drop from mobs and selling those to vendors? That's a lot of money you're leaving on the ground if you're not. If bag space is an issue for you, then you want to invest in a set of Netherweave Bags, 16-slot containers crafted by tailors that usually sell for 6-7g each. They really will pay for themselves by allowing you to stay in the field longer than you otherwise would.
Best of luck to you!
I wondered if you had the Auctioneer suite addon ? ( google it )it will help you sell at a decent price as it takes away all the guesswork , if i had two gathering trades i would have made more gold , but then again i have been around the game a long time , best bet is check out things like wool cloth on your server as on the servers i am on it always sells at around 5g a stack , and at your level easy to farm . find what is worth collecting along with the trades and you should easily make enough gold to do whatever you want .
As for skills read up the top threads here as they always have decent advice , and practice makes perfect .
As for skills read up the top threads here as they always have decent advice , and practice makes perfect .
First off, I would recommend you lvl to 70 (soon 80) rather than stay at lvl 29 on your first character. If you really like BGs you can later on create a Twink and pimp him out using the gold you could syphon from your higher lvl character to him.
If you enjoy PVE should you bother with BGs? Well, if you do enjoy PVE stick with it, short simple answer.
Incidentally, you picked a great class. I love playing paladins, and if you go on to raiding you'll get tons of love as we can fill the two most sought-after roles, Tanking and healing, specially at higher lvls. And I personally have had a blast leveling my palas (which of course is subjective but it's after all why you should play the game, to have fun).
Finally, if you are gathering herbs, you should have made a lot more gold recently. Make sure you use the Auction House for all your herbs and any and all green items (or above) not soulbound. To save your time, create a bank alt (a toon who just stands by the AH and whom you send all the stuff you want to sell). That'll help you increase your gold in-flow.
Have fun.
If you enjoy PVE should you bother with BGs? Well, if you do enjoy PVE stick with it, short simple answer.
Incidentally, you picked a great class. I love playing paladins, and if you go on to raiding you'll get tons of love as we can fill the two most sought-after roles, Tanking and healing, specially at higher lvls. And I personally have had a blast leveling my palas (which of course is subjective but it's after all why you should play the game, to have fun).
Finally, if you are gathering herbs, you should have made a lot more gold recently. Make sure you use the Auction House for all your herbs and any and all green items (or above) not soulbound. To save your time, create a bank alt (a toon who just stands by the AH and whom you send all the stuff you want to sell). That'll help you increase your gold in-flow.
Have fun.
Welcome to World of Warcraft and welcome to your new life as a Paladin. Welcome to Allakhazam also.
As you probably know since you are level 29, there are 3 talent trees available to Paladins (or any other class for that matter). At every level starting at 10, you get 1 talent point to add to one of these trees. Hopefully you have been doing this.
The 3 trees for Paladin are Holy, Protection, and Retribution. I won't go into a lenghty description of each here, because the stickies at the top of the Paladin Forum page describe each very nicely.
In general, Retribution is considered the easiest/fastest tree to use for levelling, and Holy probably the most difficult/slowest. The majority of Paladins will go Retribution until around level 60 or so, and then a fair percentage will re-spec to Holy or Protection at that point. There is nothing wrong with being Holy or Protection from the start, it is just a bit more challenging to level.
As far as PvP goes, Ret. and Holy can benefit pretty greatly from PvP gear especially at higher levels. Prot. does not get much benefit from PvP gear and finds most gear through dungeons/raids which are the specialty of a Prot. Paladin. Even if you are Ret. or Holy, you don't ever NEED PvP gear, it is just an "easy" way to get epic gear. (I say "easy" because I don't find anything easy about grinding BG's for HOURS AND HOURS to get gear, because I don't like BG's much either).
You may not even know which talent tree you really like yet. If you enjoy saving everyone's bacon, Holy is nice. If you enjoy dishing out a ton of damage and still being able to save everyone's bacon if needed, Retribution is nice. If you enjoy taking a pounding and assuming a leadership role in dungeons/raids, then Prot is nice. Also, changing from one spec to another doesn't cost much, but at higher levels requires you to have multiple sets of gear since each tree requires different gear for the most part.
Play around, find the spec that you like and just enjoy the game. If BG's aren't your thing, that is no problem. I have a 70 Prot Paladin that has been 70 for 4 months, and I still don't even have 1337 honor kills. I play for the dungeons and raids, so I don't care how many of the opposing faction I have killed. My wife, on the other hand, has a hunter who has been 70 for about as long as my Paladin, and she LOVES BGs, so she has 13,000 honor kills and some nice PvP gear... that is what is great about the game! Something for EVERYONE!
Edited, Oct 29th 2008 9:28am by jeromesimina
As you probably know since you are level 29, there are 3 talent trees available to Paladins (or any other class for that matter). At every level starting at 10, you get 1 talent point to add to one of these trees. Hopefully you have been doing this.
The 3 trees for Paladin are Holy, Protection, and Retribution. I won't go into a lenghty description of each here, because the stickies at the top of the Paladin Forum page describe each very nicely.
In general, Retribution is considered the easiest/fastest tree to use for levelling, and Holy probably the most difficult/slowest. The majority of Paladins will go Retribution until around level 60 or so, and then a fair percentage will re-spec to Holy or Protection at that point. There is nothing wrong with being Holy or Protection from the start, it is just a bit more challenging to level.
As far as PvP goes, Ret. and Holy can benefit pretty greatly from PvP gear especially at higher levels. Prot. does not get much benefit from PvP gear and finds most gear through dungeons/raids which are the specialty of a Prot. Paladin. Even if you are Ret. or Holy, you don't ever NEED PvP gear, it is just an "easy" way to get epic gear. (I say "easy" because I don't find anything easy about grinding BG's for HOURS AND HOURS to get gear, because I don't like BG's much either).
You may not even know which talent tree you really like yet. If you enjoy saving everyone's bacon, Holy is nice. If you enjoy dishing out a ton of damage and still being able to save everyone's bacon if needed, Retribution is nice. If you enjoy taking a pounding and assuming a leadership role in dungeons/raids, then Prot is nice. Also, changing from one spec to another doesn't cost much, but at higher levels requires you to have multiple sets of gear since each tree requires different gear for the most part.
Play around, find the spec that you like and just enjoy the game. If BG's aren't your thing, that is no problem. I have a 70 Prot Paladin that has been 70 for 4 months, and I still don't even have 1337 honor kills. I play for the dungeons and raids, so I don't care how many of the opposing faction I have killed. My wife, on the other hand, has a hunter who has been 70 for about as long as my Paladin, and she LOVES BGs, so she has 13,000 honor kills and some nice PvP gear... that is what is great about the game! Something for EVERYONE!
Edited, Oct 29th 2008 9:28am by jeromesimina
One other note, the best way to improve you skills is to pick the spec that you like, study up on it using the stickies on this site, and then just practice by questing, doing instances, and just playing!
For example, if you decide you like the Protection tree, make sure to actually do most of the (Dungeon) quests in your log and try to do them with other characters that are all basically the appropriate level for whichever dungeon you are doing. This will allow you to get used to your skills and learn to make the best possible use OF your skills.
Even if you go Holy or Ret, doing group quests and dungeons with similarly levelled people will help you to hone your skills. BGs can also help to hone these skills, but they are by no means necessary, especially if they aren't really your thing.
For example, if you decide you like the Protection tree, make sure to actually do most of the (Dungeon) quests in your log and try to do them with other characters that are all basically the appropriate level for whichever dungeon you are doing. This will allow you to get used to your skills and learn to make the best possible use OF your skills.
Even if you go Holy or Ret, doing group quests and dungeons with similarly levelled people will help you to hone your skills. BGs can also help to hone these skills, but they are by no means necessary, especially if they aren't really your thing.
Just enjoy the game, and learn as you go along. You don't have to rush into changing too many things at once.
BGs can be fun, and can be frustrating. I'd suggest you try each one out at least once, and then use them for something different to do if you need a break from questing.
When you make it to level 70 (or 80), you will probably be spending a lot of time in the BG's to get the PVP gears. Any marks you have saved up before then will help you out.
And if you stick around these forums long enough, you'll already be a better player than 75% of the WoW community. Read, read, read.
Welcome!
BGs can be fun, and can be frustrating. I'd suggest you try each one out at least once, and then use them for something different to do if you need a break from questing.
When you make it to level 70 (or 80), you will probably be spending a lot of time in the BG's to get the PVP gears. Any marks you have saved up before then will help you out.
And if you stick around these forums long enough, you'll already be a better player than 75% of the WoW community. Read, read, read.
Welcome!
As the others before me said, welcome.
First, good instincts on gearing - a lot of ppl will waste gold on minor upgrades they throw away in a couple levels, then repeat the process, and wonder why they're always broke.
As for BGs, do it if you enjoy it, don't do it if you don't enjoy it - simple as that. The rewards (PvP gear) don't translate to PvE as much as you'd think, nor do (IMO) a lot of the skills. Treat PvP participation as its own subgame, and you'll be fine whatever you do.
The analogy I saw used that I like best for twinking is racing cars. Ordinary PvE toons, and even to a large extent PvP players without a high-level sugar daddy, are street legal. You wouldn't expect to take your car - even a factory-model muscle car - to the speedway to compete with pros, or even the guys who pour all their spare time and cash into modding for extra horsepower. It might be cool to have a BG for everyday joes - or even have a NASCAR-style gear normalization - but that's not what we have now. That's why I don't rag on twinks, because PvP is made for them, while PvE is made for the rest of us.
Same advice as everyone else, basically:
- Get two gathering professions while leveling (note: for this purpose, enchanting is a gathering profession!)
- Make the AH work for you. Don't buy stuff you don't need. Get Auctioneer so that you know your server's market, and don't sell greens for too little, and don't buy anything for too much. When you get comfortable and have a little nest egg, you can even play the market (much better for enchanters, esp. on low-pop servers)
- Don't pass up fishing (and, to a lesser extent, cooking). Useful fish sell for more than you might think, especially at the level cap.
- A well-known secret: at the level cap, quests give gold instead of XP. The daily quests currently available to L70s with appropriate rep can be ridiculously lucrative. Stories of sustained 100g per hour hauls are common.
That attitude will take you a long way. There's so much information out there that the WoW playerbase doesn't know about - here on this site as well as specialist sites like TKA Something, Maintankadin, and Elitist Jerks.
That said, I'm pretty sure you know the drill. Use these resources for background - learn how things work, and /why/ they work. Then apply it. Stretch yourself - try to do things that are at the very edge of your capabilities. Even make it hard on yourself - solo group quests, or deal with multiple mobs even if you could pull them one by one (the classic hunter trick of chain-trapping one mob while clearing the rest of the area comes to mind). On the other hand, don't forget to learn how to work in a group. Do instances, and do them at the appropriate level - don't get run through by 70s like kids these days like to (which means that they hit the level cap without ever really experiencing their role under pressure - a big reason why PUG=hell all too often).
But most of all, enjoy the ride. You only level your first toon once. Alts are for powerleveling.
usmedalman wrote:
I am new to WoW and had never played this type of game until a month ago. I am hooked and want to improve my skills. Right now I have a lvl 29 pally that is straight out of the box. All his gear has been picked up in quests from bosses or drops from mobs, no enchants either. So as far as gear goes...and probably fighting skill as well...I can't stand toe-to-toe with most players in the bg's. So here is my question, if I enjoy PvE should I bother with bg's...and if so, why or why not.
First, good instincts on gearing - a lot of ppl will waste gold on minor upgrades they throw away in a couple levels, then repeat the process, and wonder why they're always broke.
As for BGs, do it if you enjoy it, don't do it if you don't enjoy it - simple as that. The rewards (PvP gear) don't translate to PvE as much as you'd think, nor do (IMO) a lot of the skills. Treat PvP participation as its own subgame, and you'll be fine whatever you do.
usmedalman wrote:
Just as a side note...never knew what a twink was until about a week ago, and I don't understand the problem. I spent 29 years in the US Army, with tours in both Iraq and Afghanistan, (yes, I am over 40) and I'll tell you what, every time I went into combat I wanted the best gear I could lay my hands on.
The analogy I saw used that I like best for twinking is racing cars. Ordinary PvE toons, and even to a large extent PvP players without a high-level sugar daddy, are street legal. You wouldn't expect to take your car - even a factory-model muscle car - to the speedway to compete with pros, or even the guys who pour all their spare time and cash into modding for extra horsepower. It might be cool to have a BG for everyday joes - or even have a NASCAR-style gear normalization - but that's not what we have now. That's why I don't rag on twinks, because PvP is made for them, while PvE is made for the rest of us.
usmedalman wrote:
Only problem is, in WoW during the first month I have been playing, I have only managed to make about 80G mining and picking herbs and I am saving for my mount so I have not spent it on gear. So how the heck do you get 1500G to spend gearing out a twink!
Same advice as everyone else, basically:
- Get two gathering professions while leveling (note: for this purpose, enchanting is a gathering profession!)
- Make the AH work for you. Don't buy stuff you don't need. Get Auctioneer so that you know your server's market, and don't sell greens for too little, and don't buy anything for too much. When you get comfortable and have a little nest egg, you can even play the market (much better for enchanters, esp. on low-pop servers)
- Don't pass up fishing (and, to a lesser extent, cooking). Useful fish sell for more than you might think, especially at the level cap.
- A well-known secret: at the level cap, quests give gold instead of XP. The daily quests currently available to L70s with appropriate rep can be ridiculously lucrative. Stories of sustained 100g per hour hauls are common.
usmedalman wrote:
Anyway, like I said, I am hooked on WoW and want to be the best player I can be, so your advice on bg's and ways to improve my skills would be appreciated.
That attitude will take you a long way. There's so much information out there that the WoW playerbase doesn't know about - here on this site as well as specialist sites like TKA Something, Maintankadin, and Elitist Jerks.
That said, I'm pretty sure you know the drill. Use these resources for background - learn how things work, and /why/ they work. Then apply it. Stretch yourself - try to do things that are at the very edge of your capabilities. Even make it hard on yourself - solo group quests, or deal with multiple mobs even if you could pull them one by one (the classic hunter trick of chain-trapping one mob while clearing the rest of the area comes to mind). On the other hand, don't forget to learn how to work in a group. Do instances, and do them at the appropriate level - don't get run through by 70s like kids these days like to (which means that they hit the level cap without ever really experiencing their role under pressure - a big reason why PUG=hell all too often).
But most of all, enjoy the ride. You only level your first toon once. Alts are for powerleveling.
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