Monday, November 24, 2008

Levelling 70-74 and UI

I have now gotten my frost mage Eldren on Ursin-US up to level 74, and started replacing some of my gear with the nifty new rewards from Northrend. Before heading to Northrend, I was only lacking epic gear in three slots: neck, back, and wrists. Since heading to Northrend and hitting my first 4 levels, I have picked up a lot of new gear, most of which immediately got disenchanted to feed my enchanting profession, however I have replaced a few items with new gear for leveling. I am still hanging onto some older gear right now for instances, and I'll replace that as I find new gear with spell hit. Follow the links to the items to get quest info.
My neck piece: Brooch of Heightened Potential which I replaced with the Giant Turtle Collar
New cloak: Embroidered Cape of Mysteries which I have now replaced with Crackling Cloak
New wrists: Shattrath Wraps upgraded to Wraps of the San'layn
I also ashamedly have swapped out my beloved (and heard earned) Frozen Shadoweave Shoulders for the Shoulders of the Northern Lights although it's not really an upgrade just more stamina and intellect and less spell damage.
My Old Trinkets:
Terokkar Tablet of Vim
Vengeance of the Illidari
Direbrew Hops
The Lightning Capacitor
Some New Trinkets:
Warsong's Wrath
Horn of the Herald
Serrah's Star - I love this trinket since it basically triggers on it's own, however it seems to have a 45 second cooldown, so don't expect to stack the crit.
My old wand:
Nether Core's Control Rod
New wand:
Branch of Everlasting Flame

Overall I am noticing a lot of new haste gear, which I love. It's great for for mages, however most of the items that I have come across so far are falling short in spell damage compared to what I've got, and I'm left with a choice to go for spell haste or spell damage. Given what I know so far about spell haste it beats spell damage hands down.

UI
Some of the UI mods that I am using right now are:
GarbageFu: Although it is currently outdated
I have found a replacement called sellfish, that I have yet to try, but looks good.
QuestHelper: which is mentioned on almost every WoW blog, so I just had to put it here, and it really is an awesome mod
TomTom: which will put a big arrow on the screen pointing to the coordinates that you set, and it also happens to tie in to QuestHelper to point you in the direction you are headed for your current quest objective
LightHeaded: which pulls up posts from wowhead.com in the quest log for your quests (I use this for when QuestHelper has no info)
Auc-Advanced: does many auction-related tasks for you. What I like about it is the ability to query the prices for current auctions, and automatically post auctions to match/beat current prices.
Also of note, but not an AddOn in itself is WowMatrix. This program managed updates for your addons, and pulls down the latest versions for your addons. They are constantly updating their database of addons and adding new ones, so check it out.

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