Back in the Saddle

Yeah, I know. I get this brand new blog set up, then I go and disappear for almost a month. Well, to be perfectly honest, I’ve had a severe case of Expansion Blues. Rashes and everything. I’d been playing in the Beta, but after getting my third Death Knight through the newbie area, I decided to stop wasting my time. I currently have a Rogue and a Mage trudging through the Outlands, and the last thing I wanted was to have another character doing the same Hellfire and Zangarmarsh quests I just got done doing, or am still in the process of doing. Especially when I’m just going to be going through all that Death Knight stuff again when Lich King goes live.

On top of that, friends were playing in the Public Test Realm before 3.0 went live, so guild chat was a little quiet. I wasn’t about to deal
with the PTR when I already had to deal with Beta updates every 15 minutes. Plus, 3.0 stuff was already in the Beta, so….

Enough about the excuses, though. The other night, I popped in after downloading the patch, and took some of my characters to the barber shop. First on the docket was my rogue. For the longest time, I’ve harbored a deep regret for the hair style and color I’d chosen for him. Long and bright purple, I really don’t know what I was thinking. It looks horrid, and doesn’t even go with all of the RP lore, etc. that I’ve concocted for him over the years. So I took him in there and bleached his hair white, cut about four feet off, and now he has a respectable, functional ponytail about shoulder-length. Stupid me, I should have grabbed a screenshot. Oh well.

Yesterday, some time during the day, I remembered that 3.0 also included an easening¹ of the experience required for levels 60-70. So, I logged on my rogue last night and got back to work. Hey, there’s still almost a month before Lich King – maybe I can still hit 70 by then!

When I logged in, I saw that Enyx was one (1) experience point from 64. Now, being the cynical person I am, I can’t help but wonder if because of the experiencing easening I should have been thrust into 64 just because of the experience I’d already gained in 63. But then, I guess Blizzard didn’t want to give people “free” levels. I mean, really, what are the odds that I just happen to have one less exp point than I needed?

Regardless, all I had to do was turn and grab a Handful of Candy. 5400 free experience. Ding 64. Oh, remind me to get my new skills when I’m in Stormwind again.

Over the course of the night, I had the help of a 70 Pally friend. I was running around Terrokar doing all kinds of quests. I ended up the night a little over 60% through 64, which is fracking amazing. At one point, having just turned in a half-dozen quests, I saw my Titan Bar said I was pulling in almost 180,000 experience per hour. As kick-ass as that is, I wanted to talk about my Rogue’s performance compared to pre-3.0. Overall, I’d say my DPS has doubled; if not doubled, then it’s gone up at least 70% since before the patch. Pre-3.0, I’d average about 250 dps; if I got a lot of crits, I might finish the fight with 325. Last night, before my friend came out to help, I was doing 400+ regularly. With big crits, I’d be pushing 600. I even destroyed my previous record for single highest damage output. It had been a 2100-something Eviscerate, but last night almost right out of the gates I dropped a 2460.

Now, not only will the decreased experience required make it easier to level, but with so much more DPS, these next 6 levels should fly by. Especially if I keep getting help.

Speaking of that… let me pose a question. Is it faster to level by doing all the quests on your own and getting the maximum amount of experience for all of your kills, or is it faster to have a high-level friend help you so you can get (more) quests done faster? I’ve never really compared the two methods, so I don’t really know.

Tagged as: dps, rogue