Ding!

I reached 90 on my Druid last night, bringing my max level character count up to three. It also meant that now two of the three characters with gathering professions were at max level. My skinner/leatherworker will most likely be the next 90. After flying around a bit, enjoying having my wings "unclipped", I did the starter chain for the Golden Lotus daily quests and called it a night.

On the raiding front, I'm now 5/6 in MSV. After downing Elegon, we made a few attempts at the final boss(es). Towards the end of the night, I was getting pretty good at the tank dance. The only combo I had trouble with was the 360 AOE followed by a front cleave. That combo didn't come up too often, and I was able to avoid all the attacks with the exception of two of the aforementioned combos. I may change up my strategy there, and try to use the magnetic armor mechanic to close the gap quicker. We still had to pug a healer and a DPS for the raid, but one of our regular healers is going to be joining us next week which should help with our consistency on the fights.

On my "old" main, I'll be hitting revered with the Shadow-Pan and Shieldwall factions this week. This will open up a few more options for my other two 90s, as I loathe doing daily quests for factions that I can't get the "extra" rep. My lowbie Monk has been chugging along. I hit 68 and made my way to Northrend. Doing some of the starter quests while queuing for two pugs resulted in reaching 70, where he will set for a week or two regaining the rested xp bonus.

11x90

Hunter 90
Death Knight 90
Rogue 87
Priest 85
Mage 87
Druid 90
Warlock 86
Warrior 86
Paladin 85
Shaman 85
Monk 70

Raiding Again

My guild was looking for another tank, and I have stepped into the role of second tank for our ten-man team. The only experience I had with tanking on my Death Knight was during WotLK where I tanked 5-man pugs. It took the beginning of the week to get my gear up to par. I got lucky in LFR and got the tokens for my chest and gloves, although I had previously bought those same slot items on the auction house. The LFR tier items were a wee bit better, and provided a set bonus as well. I have never tanked in a raid previously. We do, however, have a great team of folks and we made it through the first four bosses with a few wipes here and there. Our main tank did an excellent job tutoring me, and I was able to follow his guidance with few problems. We spent the second raid night wiping on Elegon, but the final attempt was a wipe at 11%. It was the best attempt of the night, and I think I finally got the hang of the dance towards the end. After the raid was over, I jumped into a PUG doing the Sha of Anger, and picked up a new boots for my tanking set.

I had the day off on Monday, so I was able run LFR on my Hunter. Doing all of the runs netted me a belt. Which I already had. At least I picked up some valor. I did finally reach exalted for the Golden Lotus, and almost honored with the August Celestials. I'm also sitting midway through honored with the Shadow-Pan, Operation:Shieldwall, and the Black Prince. While no longer technically my main, this will be the character I use for reaching exalted with various factions. I don't even bother with dailies on my alts if I haven't reached revered with this one first.

My Monk is now two levels away from leaving Outland. Spending a day doing the initial quests in the first zone and eleven PUGs (and the quests inside the dungeons) nearly took me through the whole expansion. My Druid was close to 89, so I did a few PUG runs Monday evening. All three were Shado-Pan Monastery, but the runs were as different as night and day. I ported into combat on the first run. It was only the initial pack of mobs, so I hadn’t missed anything. The tank seemed to know his way around, and used all the shortcuts that he could. I had to hold back a little on my DPS during any AOE phase, but that is to be expected since I have the Spear of Xuen. My AOE is incredible, pushing 150k at times. The second run was horrible. The tank could barely hold threat, even when I throttled my DPS. He died while engaging the first group of Sha. I popped into bear mode, and the healer managed to keep me alive. One of the other DPS died standing in the bad, but we survived. We had a wipe on the mobs just past the Sha boss, as nobody killed the orbs. I was the only one attacking them and it wasn’t enough. This foreshadowed the fail we had on the boss fight. With two ranged DPS, it was up to me to melee down the orbs. After the second wipe on the boss, I dropped group. There was no way to beat him if I was the only one working on the orbs. The third run went quickly. The group worked well together, and we had no issues.


11x90

Hunter 90
Death Knight 90
Rogue 87
Priest 85
Mage 87
Druid 89
Warlock 86
Warrior 86
Paladin 85
Shaman 85
Monk 66

A new year begins...

Prior to the holidays, my WoW time was mainly logging on to each character that was parked on the farm and harvesting the day's crop. I managed to get all of my Alliance toons, save my Monk, over to Halfhill and set up with a little four plot farm. My two 90s (Hunter and Death Knight) had the full farm. I had actively worked on getting the farm on my Hunter, but my DK reached exalted with the Tillers almost exclusively through farming. If I had time, I would do the Klaxxi daily quests on my Death Knight. When I finally reached revered and was able to buy the rep boost, I started playing on my Hunter again. The difference is amazing. I was dreading doing the rep game across my alts, but after running through the quests that led up to the Klaxxi dailys I was already at revered. I hit exalted so quickly that I was able to spend time getting my main to revered with the Golden Lotus, which is starting to open up more daily quests. I even started checking out that Operation Shieldwall thing.

All of my farmers working tirelessly provided me with enough cooking mats to finish leveling my cooking skills. Now that that is complete, it's all about using the crops to generate tokens. With my two 90s planting enigma seeds and the others planting the daily crop, my production line is working smoothly. I was originally using my DK to farm motes, which I used to make living steel. The market was always hit or miss, but I did make some profit. With so many gems and golden lotus in stock, I started making primal diamonds. Because I had been running my jewelcrafter though several pugs, I had a slew of cuts. They were selling like crazy.

With my new bankroll, I treated my main to a nice crafted chest off the auction house. With that purchase, and the VP legs from the Klaxxi, I was able to queue for the first raid. It went quite well, with only one or two wipes. I picked up a nice set of bracers from the first boss, and got the bow off the last boss with a bonus roll.

I went back to the auction house and turned some of the jewel profit into mats for my scribe. I had been creating scrolls every day, and used them to craft darkmoon cards. I ended up with three complete decks, and some doubles. I sent one deck to my Hunter, and put the other two up for sale. I saw a nice upgrade for my Hunter's green gloves which bumped my item level to 469, just shy of the next raid. I had actually capped my valor, leaving my just short of upgrading one of my epics to put me at 470. I'll just have to wait until next week.

I had shied away from pug runs with my Monk, and stuck to questing after the last few horrid runs. I hit 58 last night, and I will have to manually select Ramparts for my pugs for fear of getting one of the older dungeons using the random setting. Off to Outland I go!

11x90

Hunter 90
Death Knight 90
Rogue 87
Priest 85
Mage 86
Druid 88
Warlock 85
Warrior 85
Paladin 85
Shaman 85
Monk 58