No Deaths - Both Ways

[iarnaig]

Yeah I wouldn't go near those birds - at least not at appropriate lvl, and even in a few lvls, don't try flying round there lol, any time I go there brings back nightmares

As I recall, there's one daily on the Isle of Quel'Danas which is a simple bombing run, no fighting needed, so that'd be safe enough at 70, wouldn't do anything else there till later though, since it was the last content added in TBC, so is a bit tougher than most areas in Outland. Most other dailies I think involve being able to do quest chains to unlock them, so depends whether you're capable of soloing those chains or not (I suspect unlikely at 70, maybe better in a few lvls) - I didn't really do any dailies at that lvl on my ironman, just went straight to Northrend, although I'd explore Outland more now if I was levelling over again.

[Asy]

Thank you Iarnaig for the input and yes I know exactly what those nightmares are like! xx
Yes i'll be staying in outland a while longer.. still getting good xp for now so happy with that, just taking it slow and enjoying the different style of play
Congrats btw on your 90!
A personal achievement to be proud of.
Asy
x

[iarnaig]

You're lucky you still get exp there now - I didn't have much choice but to move onto Northrend, as mobs gave hardly any exp once I hit 70. They removed that annoyance after I'd already levelled past it, of course Next iron character I level can explore there a bit better and enjoy a different set of quests!

Thanks for the grats, that was indeed a very satisfying achievement Got to say I'm surprised no other warlocks have got there yet; I didn't feel it was anything like so hard a class as others who've made it to 90 must be (priest, druid, rogue all strike me as much harder than a warlock!), but it doesn't seem a popular class. Feels nice for me being the only one up there though lol.

[Ironworgen]

Sept 27, 2013 20:16:18 GMT -5 iarnaig said:

... I didn't feel it was anything like so hard a class as others who've made it to 90 must be (priest, druid, rogue all strike me as much harder than a warlock!), but it doesn't seem a popular class. Feels nice for me being the only one up there though lol.

From the very beginning, I've always felt that Druid was the go to class (at least for me). Melee DPS, Range DPS, Healing, and Stealth. Throw in the Shadow Meld emergency escape of a Night Elf and that's a very powerful combination.

Hunter, Warlock, and Paladin seemed to be the early favorites, and although there are lots of Druids, it never seemed as popular as those other classes.

I think the toughest classes would be Rogues, followed by Mages. That's impressive.

[Dranina]

Now that I've tried and failed 35 times - yes 27 of the paladins are mine (rest are monks) I'd say that paladins are the hardest, They are mana-dependent, and wh that seal, they are hopeless. But I'll keep on trying. Maybe some day I or rateher Irnokyrie will succeed.

[Ironworgen]

Went and tallied up some counts on wowironman.com and paladins are actually the second most popular class behind hunters, although with the recent changes to that class I have to wonder if that will continue.

Class	Count	Active Pages	Dead Pages
Hunter	7163	14	65
Paladin	2093	5	20
Druid	1716	4	16
Warlock	1524	3	15
Warrior	1160	2	12
Mage	1114	1	12
Priest	997	3	9
Rogue	885	2	10
Shaman	837	2	8
Monk	180	1	2
Death Knight*	21	1	1

My counts may be off a little, but I think they're in the ballpark.

[irontia]

I have about 15 dead rogues over level 10, but they're all called the same name so they just count as one, I assume. I delete them and start over with the same named toon - I have all my addons set up to be ironman appropriate for the irontia named profile, so the new toon is recognised by the system and my interface goes back to basic.

Rogue is actually quite easy, I've found - the stealth and vanish abilities enable it to do things that are impossible for other classes. Plus dps is really REALLY high compared to the other classes I've tried. They do have healing (recuperate) and ranged (throw) plus the ability to sap and blind mobs, so if you have 3 or even 4 mobs next to a quest item it is simple to take them out one at a time. My deaths have all been cockiness, carelessness or dc's, never felt particularly underpowered once even at level 68 (my highest), only a little squishy when taking on ogres and the like.

Warrior looks the hardest - once you engage there is no escape; same for mage and they have cloth, ouchies. And paladin - low dps, having heals seems nice, but when it's quite spec dependent for their cost and strength it's a poisoned gift, it seems. Ditto the shammy. Plus I keep trying to press s for stealth on her and can't understand why she doesn't disappear.

Those figures are quite similar to the regular realm counts for toons, apart from the appearance of warlocks in the top 4 - they are down the bottom with rogues in regular counts.

I found a marvellous blog cynwise.wordpress.com/ which details the latest class distribution data. In fact, the whole blog is fascinating and will waste an enormous amount of everybody's time.

Enjoy.

[Dranina]

I'm looking forwards to seeing how the Armory's "Character have been inactive for too long"-culling of characters will modify these statistics over the next month or so. Many, many of those on the Current list are still marked with the Cata-symbol. My guess is that the list over active challengers will continue to diminish radically until about mid-December, as many joined the challenge after the interviews with some of our heroes.

[irontia]

My main iron rogue died at only 21 to yet another dc so I'm sticking to the pacifist, with less chance of dying in combat during a disconnect. Played her for a few hours yesterday and had 3 dc's but no deaths, so far so good. I NEVER want to see Eversong Woods again. Finished level 19 in Azshara, there are quite a number of gathering and other non-fighting quests there at a higher level which is great, but not many nodes unfortunately.

She's now 21 and has archaeology, and the experience from that is quite high compared to herbing and mining. It was such an appalling grind getting to 20 that is is such a relief to be going a bit faster again. Archaeology is nerve-racking though, sneaking through mobs and praying the patrols won't make it impossible to get the last couple of sites. Without the rogue ability sap I'd be really struggling.

I'm sticking to Kalimdor (Horde) as the Eastern Kingdoms sites are too scattered to get to easily. So far they are just appearing in Azshara and Ashenvale, which isn't too bad once you get all the flight paths.

I am getting the impression playing pacifist is not as truly ironmannish as the regular fighting toon though - lots of sneaking and avoiding and grinding but no challenging picking off of mobs. I can't play the regular iron way any more though due to our dreadful internet, so I'll stick with the pacifist for now.

[Dranina]

Wow gratz on making it to 20 on a peaceful toon.
I hear your frustration on DC's I had them en masse once and after my 7th toon in a row was killed by one, I swore never to play again. But a techincian chased away the gremlins (aka loose connexion) by fasrening a nut, and now I only get an occasional and quite strange DC. Net is not there any more, but playing is OK untill changing place, then I DC. - not dying any more!
I'm happy to hear that archaeology is good. I hope I'll ever get the chance to learn it. My peaceful (Fredelig - NE Priest) is now leve 13 thanks to Darkmoon Faire and Brewfest.
A peaceful Rogue is quite a contradiction, But sounds fun. Good luck and stay safe.

[irontia]

Aagh! Died at 25 to a stealthed panther in Stranglethorn Vale. Totally avoidable as I was feeling a bit nervous about being there in the first place, my saps were starting to miss as the mobs got higher and higher level compared to me. Caution, caution, caution... total time played to get to that point was one day, 12 hours, and not much of that was standing around. I did sell all the herbs and ore I gathered for around 2k though.

I learnt quite a bit. Pacifist is an absolute and utter grind, patience is essential. I was leaving it for a few days then using up my rested experience and logging when it was purple again just to make it bearable.

Things definitely sped up when I hit 20 and had access to better herbs and archaeology. I found I didn't even hit one single mob, my strategy consisted of running away, I never learnt first aid and I don't think it's much use for pacifist. I had lifeblood and evasion keyed to 3 and 4 so i could hit them while running and sap was on the e key (my prime real estate key), which for normal rogues is SS. I would have put blind on the r key when I got it...

Archaeology was kind of a poisoned chalice, the sites became too difficult to dig and avoid the mobs, even with sap. I ended up with a couple patrolled by elementals which rogues can't sap. I would have had to leave them for a much higher level.

I was actually at the point of heading back to Hillsbrad - there are a lot of good experience quests there and I hadn't even made it as far as Tarren Mill. Stranglethorn was just too high level for poor squishy little me at level 24-25.

I played it as a rogue because that's what I play, but the abilities make it a very good choice. Sap is available at a very low level and is invaluable. Stealth is a nobrainer. Blind further on (and a few combat dependent cc abilities but I don't think I would have used those). Druids are obviously good too, but having that cc that works on lots of mob types and doesn't put you into combat is awesome.

Pacifist is a different way to play with a totally different feel to regular ironman. Watching rares go by is hard though...I actually found a couple of new ones in Silverpine which I still haven't got. I might try again sometime once i'm over this death *cries*

[iarnaig]

Ow, gotta hurt dying that far in, it's such a grind playing pacifist, even at low lvls, that a lvl 20-something respresents a big chunk of time!

Btw druids have an even better cc than sap - roots work on any mob type Ofc it's not helpful on a caster mob, but those are pretty few and far between; other than that you can root, pick your herb and run off

One small tip - unless you're running away backwards, evasion won't help you a lot, since you can't dodge attacks from behind, iirc. If I'm wrong, that's great, but I think that's how it works anyway

[irontia]

Ah, the evasion thing is true, didn't think of that, since I'm always facing things normally. I'm not sure what best race would be either (given I always play horde); the otherwise fabulous undead racial works off hits on the other mob, so it won't proc for pacifist. Orc maybe, for reduced stuns, or tauren for more base stamina and the ability to be a druid.

Running away is ok if you can run far and fast enough without picking up adds; I found it pretty risky as the levels got higher. If I was doing it again I'd stay in lower level zones until I was at least 5 levels higher, for the reduced aggro zone and less damage if caught. At a minimum. No STV no matter how tempting all those lovely herbs are until I was 30. Rogues get sprint at 26, distract at 28, vanish at 34 and blind at 38 so there's some really good stuff there if you can get to it. Looking at druids, I think they're completely different but comparable to rogues for playing pacifist. Also less contradictory in nature!

I can't see how any other classes other than those two could easily do it - although if anyone has ideas I'd love to hear them.

[iarnaig]

Ooh, tricky to pick a Horde race, yeah, Alliance is a fairly obvious choice, so obvious that I've gone out of my way to avoid it for regular ironmen but decided to try it on my pacifist! I was going to suggest goblin for rocket jump but you can't get out of their start zone without doing their quest chain, so hmm. Trolls have a reduction in movement impairing effects which might be helpful if running away from something with a slow, but kinda situational, probably tauren would be most useful overall as higher health will always help!

I think non stealth classes could only do pacifist if they stuck to really low lvl zones where mobs are grey, which would be rather boring, I think! With great care a mage might manage it, sheeping everything along the way, but it'd be risky. My druid so far has tended to not go in higher lvl zones and to mainly stay where mobs are 2-3 lvls lower for reduced aggro range, as I get higher I agree with you, staying 4-5 lvls higher would definitely be the way.

[Dranina]

I feel with you for your death. It is such a grind. Hurry up and make a new for hallow's end.

Oct 19, 2013 22:23:11 GMT -5 irontia said:

... Pacifist is an absolute and utter grind, patience is essential. I was leaving it for a few days then using up my rested experience and logging when it was purple again just to make it bearable.

I don't know how you can use up your rested bar as it's only used on XP from monsters - or am I mistaken. Mine has never been used up, but is always blue.