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In my never-ending quest for Archimonde PvP ownage, I'd ditched herbalism and alchemy for engineering and mining.  I know it'll be awhile before I get to the Goblin/Gnomish choice, but I wonder if any of you have any experience with either of them.  Goblin seems to have more offensive toys (and that great 300-500 fire absorption helmet) but even the best toys cap out at around 400-500 damage and you have to keep making new ones.  I'm leaning toward Gnomish, but I wonder if the stuff is too gimmicky too really be as much help in PvP (mind control cap- 20 sec use, hour cooldown, works sporadically, 10 second invis device once an hour, one hour cooldown shrink ray- 250 less attack for 20 sec, etc.) as the offensive power of goblindom would.  Anyone have any experience with either?

It is my understanding that gnomish is gimmick and goblin is more useful for PVP.

Goblin stuff is more likely to kill you if it fails. Then again I myself will probably go goblin for the jumper cables. As a hunter who can fd the ability to fd then res a reser is VERY handy.

Gnome stuff has some pretty awsome tools as well though and the side effects are usually less instantly fatal than the goblin stuff when it goes boom.

kaid

Goblin flame thrower is pretty cool, can light yourself on fire but thats just how it goes :)

Oh and just cause its called Goblin jumper cables doesn't mean only goblin engineers can make them.   As a matter of fact you can learn that schematic well before you can even chose to go Goblin or Gnome spec.  Tip: make at least 2 as they can break on a failed attempt.

Whichever you pick, make a friend who picked the other.  I am fairly sure you don't have to be a specialist in one area to use the items, just to make them.

I'd say for pvp goblin is better, bad news is alchemy is better than either of them.

The difference being that you can buy/bum for potions from alchemists.

I can barely keep myself supplied as an alchemist with the good potions.  Sure there might be plenty of heal and mana potions for sale but you sure as hell won't see any alchemist selling the 25agi 2%crit chance potions, or a gift of arthas potion.  And if they do it will be for a price that will make it extremely hard for you to keep yourself supplied full time.

I'm a gnomish engineer.  As far as PVP goes, I'd say the items are fairly useless.  I use them as an "oh crap" fix in PvE, and that's about all they're good for.

  There is an all-purpose cooldown on usnig engineering items in addition to the item cooldowns, so it's not like you can toss a grenade, then drop a gnomish shrink ray then whip out the mechancial chicken on an opponent.  The fight would be over and one of you would be dead by the second activation in PvP.

  Plus the failure rate on gnomish stuff is fairly high, since it allows you to use the features of other classes.  Goblin explosives are probably more reliable, even if you're doing less damage as you level-up.

Fair enough.

Jumper cables suck ass. I had them with my hunter and they worked maybe 1 in 5 times and the 5th time they blew up into pieces and I needed another fucking fused wiring from gnomergan.

You don't need gnomish engineering to use or make jumper cables anyway, they are in the low end of the skill range and it's a vendor rare plan. I was very disappointed in engineering for a hunter. If you are throwing bombs you're lowering your dps from your bow. I ended up dropping it and taking up leatherworking. At least then I didn't have to lose tracking for find minerals either. Maybe engineering is ok for pvp but jumper cables and other tinkered gimmicks suck royal ass, as the failure rate is way too high to be useful.

I had a fused wiring drop off a goblin shredder at the Venture Co. Base in Stranglethorn. You may not have to go all the way to Gnomegeran to get another one.

Ya thottbot listed them as dropping there but the drop rate is pretty low. It's pretty low in Gnomergan too, only seen one drop per trip. Even when jumper cables don't self destruct they non-destructively fail way too much to be worth bothering with. I had them work once in 5 tries like I said and the other engineer in our guild has had about the same success rating. If they worked better based on engineering skill I wouldn't have minded so much.

I've been lucky with the cables, 2 for 2 so far and I have an extra set on me just in case they break.  You can also get fused wiring (sometimes) from the remains of a used target dummy.  When its destroyed or its timer expires you can loot the remains for a very short amount of time and you will get something back.

Basically Jumper Cables are an emergency measure and not meant to replace a Priest for rezzing, both times helped me out as we were far into an instance without a priest.

Speaking of target dummies... how does that work exactly? I once had someone throw one down in the goblin engineer room in deadmines and the whole floor was subsequently pulled onto us. Now, this was a pickup group so I can't be sure if it was the target dummy, or the retarded actions of some other random. So what I really want to know is if a target dummy works like that?

The target dummy just generates aggro a small distance around it, its good for extras on a pull as it will get attacked for a few minutes.  It won't pull off a mob that has alot of aggro on you though and it's range doesn't appear to be very large.  I'm guessing someone did something else to get all that aggro.

The range on the target dummy is small. The room that you are describing is VERY easy to screw the pull up and get a whole bunch of those goblins. Since many of them then summon annoying clock work things it can get ugly fast. Infact that room and the top part of the boat are the only two areas my group even slows down a little bit on in that dungeon mostly so we can setup the pulls better.

If you ever want to rip through the dreadmines in silly time I think it was maybe 30 minutes for us at level 23 for the group use 4 hunters. No healers no main tanks just a whole shit load of dps and pets. Mr smite never knew what hit him and vancleef went down like a pansy. We did have to slow a bit in the goblin room to keep the pulls to one or two and again at the top of the boat to pull when the captain greenskin was not by the front mobs. Track is damn handy on the top of the boat because if the captain is near the last mobs up top when you pull you can wind up with 6 mobs in a hurry which is dang nasty.

Its a fun instance though so stick with it till you kick its booty. Also don't forget to kill the goblin cook cookie as he seems to drop cute pets.

kaid

Oh I've done deadmines. Alot. A friend and his brother both wanted full defias gear and we hit that place until that feat was accomplished (I could proximity pull that instance even if blind now). Now I'm going to be doing runs for cookie's stirring rod for my mage and I'm not looking forward to it. Since I have no friends on this server yet I'll have to rely on randoms, and with me not as the tank OR healer. That's gonna suck hard, I can see it already.