29 July 2009

Master of Arms, the easy way

I respecced my retadin prot on a whim and blew a silly stack of gold to gear her up. I've long suspected I just don't have the temperament to tank, so I'm not sure where this urge came from. Still, here we are, 25k health, still crittable, an utterly baffling array of spells and abilities, and a sword skill of zero.

One thing at a time. Last night, I set out to raise my weapon skills.

I spent a couple of minutes chasing mobs around but this quickly grew tedious. Then I remembered reading somewhere that the elite constructs in Icecrown don't hit very hard. What the hell, I thought, can't hurt to try.

And I can confirm they really do hit like my grandmother. Between the shield thing that increases block chance and the shield thing that absorbs damage, my health barely shifted. (Don't ask me what they're called. Everything on my cast bar is holy, divine or righteous.) Judging light was enough to keep me fully topped up, even missing as often as I did.

I'm sure I must be the last person alive to discover these mobs, but they're a revalation all the same. It took me only four or five of them to max out maces, and I'll finish off swords tonight. It would have been less if some well-meaning allies hadn't decided to 'help me out'. As a former junior charades champion, I thought I was quite good at unspoken communication, but there really is no way to mime 'don't kill this thing I'm hitting, I'm levelling my weapon skill' while getting stomped on by a three-storey ball of dead flesh. 'Fuck off' had no effect, either.

(Incidentally, these things are level 82, so perfect target dummies for testing your performance at heroic level.)

The Master of Arms achievement requires you to raise four weapon skills to 400. For some classes, these elites are almost as good as the blasted lands mobs in achieving that.

When my paladin's done, I'll be right over there with my priest, properly disc specced, to tickle them with staves, daggers and maces. It's just a shame we can't learn enough weapons to max them all out this way.

6 comments:

Unknown said...

"It's just a shame we can't learn enough weapons to max them all out this way."

Do it like my grandaddy did it back in the day: bare-knuckled boxing.

Unarmed is a weapon skill - you can still get the achievement on your priest. I got the achievement boxing the dragonkin guys outside the Nexus.

Anonymous said...

I actually got this on my shadow priest, and that includes unarmed. The way I did it was to "punch" the eggs in the area close to Captain Rupert in Zul'Drak. Then I alt+Tabbed and read some forums. As for the other weapons... I believe they were wand, staff, and dagger. I just switched them out, and as I killed things for dailies and other quests, I'd dot up the target, then wand/melee until dead until I fully leveled that particular weapon. It made things a lot less tedious for me.

candy said...

hehe. nice!

I got this achievement on my priest after watching our drunk scrub raid leader whip out a weapon with skill level 0 and start tanking the pre-Ignis molten giants, insisting it would be OK for him to skill up that way.

um, no.

I think I did my skill ups in SM runthroughs of alts.

KiwiRed said...

For my shadowpriest, I leveled up her weapon skills while clearing the quests on Azuremyst Isle for Loremaster (and it worked quite well). When I tried leveling up my warrior's skills, it wasn't quite as effective (ie, the mobs kept dying to the melee damage) and I ended up farming the female Vrykul in the cave near Brunnhildar Village for relics.

Anonymous said...

I go to sholazar and start wrestling crocolisks. Just keep your health up (easy on a priest, as warrior I had to rest) and move on when you kill something.

Use the white quality weapons you buy in dalaran. They have high speed and low damage.

As for ranged, shoot the scourge flying plague pyramids in zul drak.

Ho Ho said...

Got my priest the achi a few months ago doing Hodir dailys. With zero unarmed skill it takes about 25 minutes to kill a normal mob but when it dies you are at least around 350 or so :)

I'm thinking about maxing all weapon skills on my hunter. I already have guns, bows and daggers with staffs almost there. Still around a gazillion other skills to go!