If you're looking at creating a new character for the purpose of Mining and Herbalism (especially since you can track all types of nodes now), here's the absolute best class benefiting from both speed and utility:
Tauren Frost Deathknight (with Unholy Presence)
What's also nice about DKs is that you start at 55 and you can practically level yourself to 80 from just gathering. By the time you hit 80, you'll have enough to purchase all flying upgrades including [Master Flying] (4000G with Exalted Rep) to get your 310% mounted flying speed.
Benefits:
+20% Mounted Speed
+15% Foot Speed (Stay in Unholy Presence)
Cultivation allows you to herb very quickly
Path of Frost
100% Underwater Movement (*with [Hook of the Master Angler])
Frost abilities are also awesome for crowd control and survivability:
- Hungering Cold!
- Freeze, silence, or slow down players and NPCs alike.
- Frost Fever disease on enemies causes a 50% reduction in speed for 10 seconds. Howling Blast hits multiple enemies too.
- Immunity to knock-back or pull mechanics (other DKs).
- Fast escape skills (if you just want to keep gathering and avoid combat).
- Summon ghouls to keep NPCs busy while gathering.
* All of the benefits listed above make this class ideal for Fishing (Path of Frost FTW) as well, and the class is perfect for beating the Stranglethorn Fishing competition. Just make sure you do your research before competing!
Other Notes:
Mining and Herbalism used to benefit from Haste Rating, but I'm not sure if this is still the case. Herbalism might, but I couldn't tell with Mining - if you know for sure, please let me know.
With Haste Gear and Lifeblood (Herbalism ability), you could pop it every 3 minutes for super-speed mining if you're in a rush. =]
If you're interested in Herbalism only, I would recommend the Tauren Druid race/class instead. You don't get the extra +20% mount speed, but when you're in Flight Form, you don't have to "dismount" to farm herbs which is very nice (for avoiding combat as well). Skinning also goes well with this build, since you can remain in Flight Form the entire time (easy to skin/herb then escape.)
Unfortunately, if you want mining and herbalism - you have to sacrifice the mount/dismount time. It's worth it though for all of those precious herb and mining nodes out there. =]
On a side note, with Death Gate and your hearth set to Orgrimmar, it gives you very easy access to UC, ORG, Blasted Lands (then Shattrath), and the portals to Cataclysm locales. During downtime, I would also recommend doing the Argent Tournament daily quests to get the [Argent Pony] for remote access to your banks.
[Note: I don't want to make a habit of these types of posts, but I see a lot of people still looking for information on this. I'd prefer to be a more obscure blog containing non-mainstream information (unless it's something I find really interesting), so I won't be doing this too often since this can be found through a little research already on other sites.]
With the recent changes to Dire Maul (Ogre Suit reputation reward + Free Knot gone) you pretty much have to sacrifice your Bloodsail rep (ie, go back to being hated with the pirates) in order to get reputation with the Cartel. Although it would be nice to stay Honored with them, there's really no way to build up Cartel rep without losing it.
There's supposed to be something introduced in Cataclysm where you can keep your Bloodsail rep but also increase Cartel rep without damaging it. So, if you're patient - wait until after Dec 7th and avoid Cartel cities for now. Level 85 Bruisers hit hard. =]
I would recommend waiting if you can.
If you don't want to wait, keep in mind that you only need to obtain the Bloodsail Honored reputation ONCE. Meaning once you're hit Honored, you can decrease the reputation without losing the achievement.
You can track your [Insane in the Membrane] achievement by typing:
/script AddTrackedAchievement(2336)
To remove tracking, type:
/script RemoveTrackedAchievement(2336)
Basically, even if you're hated with the pirates again, you still get to keep your Bloodsail Admiral title and the Insane in the Membrane achievement prerequisite.
So here are the current methods to grind Cartel rep after obtaining Bloodsail Admiral:
- You can still kill pirates around Ratchet, Gadgetzan, and Booty Bay. They reward 5 per kill for the closest cartel member, and 2-3 points for the other cartel members. Named NPCs can give 25 rep per kill. Spawn rates are very fast.
- Venture Co. Evacuees in Grizzly Hills grant +5 to Booty Bay and +2-3 for the other Cartel members. What's nice about Northrend mobs is that they drop Frostweave cloth, you can use them to level (you or your pet), and they drop other Northrend items.
- Killing all of the pirates (except for STV pirates) will not hurt your Bloodsail reputation, so you could farm these guys to build up Cartel Rep and still keep your Bloodsail.
- There are new groups of Gadgetzan pirate mobs (Lost Rigger Cove) that spawn fast, it's a nice place to grind Magecloth cloth (for turn-ins) without losing Bloodsail rep too.
- Note: Other than Dire Maul, all of the Feralas + Burning Steppes Quests (e.g. Zapped Giants, Fuel of the Zapping, Egg Freezing, and Egg Collection) have all been removed as of 4.0.3 as well.
- By far, the fastest method to regain rep are the Cartel Rep Cloth Turn-in repeatables. These cause -500 to Bloodsail by the way. Cloth prices have dropped significantly on the AH due to all of the new toons, so this is a very cheap and fast method now.
[Mending Old Wounds]
Requirements: 40 Linen Cloth + 4 Empty Vials
Location: On the road out of Ratchet towards Crossroads
+500 Ratchet, +250 For Other Cartel Members
[Traitor to the Bloodsail]
Requirements: 40 Silk Cloth + 4 Red Dye
Location: On the small hill of east of the road outside of Booty Bay
+500 Booty Bay, +250 For Other Cartel Members
[War at Sea]
Requirements: 40 Mageweave Cloth + 4 Strong Flux
Location: Just outside of Gadgetzan, near the road coming from old Shimmering Flats
+500 Gadgetzan, +250 For Other Cartel Members
[Making Amends]
Requirements: 40 Runecloth + 4 Coal
Location: Near the fork in the road towards Winterspring, he's easy to spot
+500 Everlook, +250 For Other Cartel Members
Note: You can only interact with these NPCs if you are lower than Neutral. Once you hit Neutral with the Cartel member, you can't turn in cloth to that NPC anymore. (Once you hit Neutral with Everlook for example, start turning in cloth with Gagetzan instead for example.)
Other ways to improve reputation gain:
During Christmas, [A Smokywood Pastures' Thank You!], [Treats for the Greatfather Winter], and [Metzen the Reindeer] give you +500 Steamwheedle Cartel each.
Although it's too late now, the Thanksgiving [Spirit of Sharing] and Halloween [Invocation of the Wickerman] grant 10% reputation gain for 2 hours.
If I learn more (ie, new quests before Cataclysm), I'll update this blog post.
So, this "Farewell Northrend" video is making rounds on the internet. Not only that, but there are many other commemorative photos, webpages, and videos being created for "remembering" Outlands and Northrend.
To be clear: Nothing is happening to Outlands or Northrend.
There are just some minor aesthetic changes. The Shattering/Cataclysm changes only affect the 1-60 Old World areas. The 60-70 (Outlands) and 70-80 (WOTLK) leveling zones are unchanged.
But, this just goes to show you the power of hype and how it shapes your perception. =]
If you've ever played "god games" before, you'll know what I mean. Everything looks pretty much the same, but it's like the developers just dropped in some trees and grass here-and-there, shoveled out some trenches, threw in some water, and reshaped some of the mountains. Once the geography was changed, it was just a matter of dropping in some new quest givers and NPCs.
For the new 80-85 leveling experience, don't set your expectations too high. I think the new zones are awesome, but please just ignore the hype as it will give you a false impression of what to expect. You might not remember this, but a lot of people complained about the new WOTLK leveling zones (ie, it was "too small"), but keep in mind that the new Cataclysm 80-85 zones are even smaller.
The original WoW had 2,600 quests (1-60), BC had 2,700 quests (60-70), WOTLK had 2,350 quests (70-80), and Cataclysm has just under 1,000 quests (80-85). (Note: 80-85 is supposed to take the same amount of time as 70-80 leveling.)
Although the number of quests isn't really a fair comparison of size, it does give you a pretty good idea of what to expect. =]
Cataclysm was more designed for the newbies and for veteran players who wanted to create new characters. It's a way to keep people playing longer, and encourages players to invite friends to play with them. Previously, many people didn't want to start playing WoW because of the sheer number of high-level characters and how far ahead everyone was - Cataclysm is a way to start players on an even ground and to bring in more new customers.
In regards to any New Realms, we won't know for sure until around Dec. 3-6. Currently, subscriptions counts don't warrant the creation of new realms and even with 1-2 million new players, it still wouldn't warrant new realms.
However, if Blizzard makes an announcement that "new realms are required to meet the demands of new players" - it sure would make their investors happy. =]
They might even wait until 1-2 months after launch to make it look like new realms were never actually planned and that they had to "suddenly" purchase and build out new servers and realms to meet the explosive growth. Realistically though, the new realms are probably ready right now and the servers were prepared months ago.