After the Storm

We managed to make it through the hurricane without any issues, although there are several places in my town and the surrounding area where the wind took down trees and the runnoff flooded and washed out several roads.

10x85 Standings:

Hunter 85

Deathknight 85

Rogue 84

Priest 84

Warlock 78

Mage 75

Druid 73

Warrior 55

Paladin 54

Shaman 0

The PVP leveling is nice to break things up a bit, but it gets tedious quickly for me. I may just do a random battleground daily for the bonus and then go back to PUGs, questing, or boosting during the week. I did like the gains I made during the Call to Arms weekend, but I don't really enjoy PVP all that much.

Week in Rearview

I didn't get as much time to play this week as I would have liked, but I did get some quality time in the battlegrounds for my mage and druid. Even my lock got a little PvP done.  I managed to finish leveling my deathknight by leveling my archaeology. I'm still running Northrend dailies to pick up the last few peices of heirloom gear, along with the Firelands dalies on my main during the week.


10x85 status:

Night Elf Hunter (main) 85

Human Death Knight 85

Night Elf Rogue 84

Night Elf Priest 84

Gnome Warlock 77

Human Mage 75

Worgen Druid 72

Tauren Paladin 50

Worgen Warrior 49

Undecided Shaman 0 (currently throwaway bank mule)

Rainy Days and Mondays...

I've run a bunch of LFD pugs on my Paladin, with most of the groups being pretty decent. The occasional DPS that pulls is the exception instead of the rule. As I approached level 50, I decided to try a little PvP to shake things up. I'm not a PvPer, but I might change that up a bit. I'm not going to do more battlegrounds because it's something I really enjoy, but because it breaks things up from running the same dungeon over and over. It also seems to be the best way to acquire gear for level 85 unless Blizz stops being stingy with the Justice Points for WoTLK content. Why do Utgarde Keep seven times for 84 JP when one battleground will give the equivalent in honor on the weekend?

I will more than likely use the battlegrounds a lot more on my DPS toons because of the shorter queue. The LFG queues are just so damn long on them. I even ran a bunch of battlegrounds on my druid healer to test the waters. It was a lot more fun than several of the LFD runs, which had tanks who felt the need to speed pull through leveling dungeons. Maybe I'm just cranky and the only one who wants to loot or meet a quest objective. It's not fun for me as heals or DPS to have the tank out of line of sight and pulling the next group when I pause for a second to loot. The last few have been so bad that I can't find a pause to ask them to slow down. I guess I need to make a macro or just let them die once or twice. I don't feel like making a macro, so I guess it'll be the latter. At least as DPS in those situations, I have the luxury of not needing to be right back in action. Meh.

Looking at my roster, I did make some progress over the past two weeks on my 10x85 project:

Night Elf Hunter (main) 85

Human Death Knight 84

Night Elf Rogue 84

Night Elf Priest 84

Gnome Warlock 77

Human Mage 72

Worgen Druid 68

Tauren Paladin 50

Worgen Warrior 49

Undecided Shaman 0 (currently throwaway bank mule)

I will most likely do the 7 weekly LFD pugs on my tanks and healers just to keep in practice and for the bonus XP and gear, but I'll be doing a lot more battlegrounds on weekends to cap my honor and JPs. I'm still trying to decide what race to roll as my shammy, leaning towards a Goblin though because I don't have one on this server on any of my three accounts.

Holy Cow

I spent the past week mainly leveling a new Tauren paladin. I decided to try and have one of each class on my main account, which meant deleting my level 23 Troll druid. The only other Horde character I had on the server was another lowbie on one of my other accounts. I ended up deleting my 73 Ally deathknight and rerolled as an Orc. The deathknights' purpose is two-fold: acting as an AH mule and boosting through some content to finish quests and gear drops from dungeons.

I'm leveling this paladin as protection-spec, trying to use the LFD. I sent my DPS plate heirlooms to my new deathknight (you can use the mailbox in village in the phased starting area) and quickly got through the initial area, arriving in Orgrimmar just shy of level 60. I few down to the neutral AH and transferred some gold to my new mule.

The first thing I did after creating my new paladin was to mail my tanking gear, along with a one-handed and two-handed heirloom weapon. I used the two-hander for questing and the one-handed for tanking. WTB an heirloom shield - there was nothing on the Horde auction house, and the quest drop was pitiful. I managed to transfer one over via the neutral auction house without it getting snatched up. I quested up to level 15 rather quickly getting extra XP from the heirlooms, mining, and herbing. I made my way over to Orgrimmar and took up fishing and cooking for the daily quests.

I queued up and instantly got the LFD window. Ragefire went pretty smooth, and we finished with no problems. I used my booster/mule to run through a few more times to get a specific drop. I started to queue for a specific dungeon (Deadmines) to pick up a few more drops and because I knew it inside and out. The first run was interesting, as I zoned in to a dead first boss. It seems the last tank did not have a protection spec, sucked horribly, and was either booted or dropped group. We proceeded to finish the run without any problems. I re-queued again to pick up the quests, and had another run without any real issues.

I picked up my level 20 class quest, and boosted myself through Shadowfang Keep with my deathknight. I got a nice shield drop, but there was no way I could wear it with the Ally lion on it. BOA shield ASAP please!

On Friday I queued and got Wailing Caverns. Everything was going well until we dropped the first boss. I found myself sitting in the dark as the power went out. I went upstairs and watched the storm outside - lightning, thunder, massive wind, torrential rain. I later found out there was a funnel cloud spotted less than a mile from my house! the power eventually came back on, and I logged onto my main and ran a raid on Bastion of Twilight.

We did pretty well considering that the raid group was mainly ungeared alts. Between the nerfs and the experience of the raid lead, we one-shot our way through with one wipe on Captain Planet. We made several good attempts on Cho'gal, getting him to 80k on our best attempt. Considering that most of the raid had never done the fight before, and our melee heavy group it was pretty good.

The rest of the weekend was spent on the paladin. I tanked a successful run of wailing caverns, which is now much more linear than it used to be. I queued up again and got Stockades. The horde is left out in the cold as far as quests go there, like it was for my other non-Horde toons in Ragefire. I queued up again and got Blackfathom Deeps. I zoned in and we were already past the first boss, so my spider-sense was tingling.

We make our way to the second boss, and I notice the hunter pulling. I don't say anything, but I also don't help him. I figure if you're going to pull it, you can tank it. I just keep it in my sight in case it pulls off to the healer. We drop Gelihast, and start making our way up the hill. As we're moving along, I'm healing myself more than the healer is. He starts typing a "knock-knock" joke as we go, ending with "who's there", "not me" and dropping group. I added the ass to my ignore list and queued a replacement. One of the DPS had gone on ahead and gotten killed. One day he'll learn not to pull without a healer. Today was not that day.

We get a druid healer, buff up, and continue. We make it to the next Kelris, and I'm trying to control the pulls so we don't get swamped with adds. I have one AOE spell at my level, and it's on a 2 minute cool-down. I pull the boss, figuring that I can handle him and the two adds that are still up. I most likely would have had no problem, except the druid also lights one of the torches spawning a set of water elementals. We wipe.

We zone back in, and I say in chat that I have no real AOE at my level and to please let me initiate the pulls. We get back to the boss room, and I sneak around behind and grab the water elementals. I bring them back and we burn them down. We also burn down the last add that was walking around the room, and I ask the druid if he is going to heal or stay in kitty form for the rest of the fight. He shape-shifts back and says he'll heal. I pull the boss, and he lights the rest of the torches causing mass chaos and another wipe. I yell at him in chat and someone initiates a kick, which quickly passes. One of the idiot DPS also drops group. A new DPS zones in on me in the boss room (I ran back), another DPS drops. The last DPS is in another zone for almost 5 minutes. I let the new DPS now just what kind of fools he's playing with and re-queue us.

We get a mage and a priest, and the last DPS finally comes back. The mage kites some of the adds, while we focus down the rest. We continue on and drop the final boss. I still have some unfinished quests, so I grab my deathknight and run it again. Hopefully the next time I queue up, I won't get so many asshats.