Profession and Leveling Status

I'm so close on the hunter. So of course there is maintenance today. Just 5 bars to go, and I'll have my fourth toon at level 85. And it will be happening today. (Unless of course 1/11/11 ends up being the day of eternal maintenance because something about that strangely binary string of date numbers caused Blizzard's servers to inexplicably implode).

So I've been providing a pretty decent string of updates on my leveling progress, but realized that I hadn't really been talking about my professions at all. So quick update on that as well:

My first toon out of the gate, the Paladin, has maxed his Mining skill and is almost there on Jewelcrafting. I'm not in a big hurry on Jewelcrafting since that's really more about acquiring all of the recipes than it is about necessarily getting to max level. All that being said, I'm around 515 or so, so pretty close.

On my Druid, my skinning is maxed (because really, how hard is that?). I've barely even started on leatherworking though. The skinning mats were just selling to well, and I just couldn't see any major benefit to working leatherworking all the way through at this point.

On Joar, he has maxed his cooking and is diligently working on fishing dailies. I'm working on both enchanting and tailoring but both are in the 490 range. Again - no big hurry here.

My hunter has maxed his alchemy, which is a huge money maker for me at this point, and he's getting pretty close on herbalism. The next toon up after the hunter is going to be the shaman. His professions are herbalism and inscription. Not sure I'm going to be in a big hurry on inscription, but we'll see. The Darkmoon cards, as always, are selling really well.

With the hunter, I've been leveling him as beast mastery and it's been extremely easy. My little bear mini-tank can stand up to just about anything. The rotation is very easy and extremely forgiving. There are quite a few cooldowns to keep track of, but if you don't bother with them much while questing, it's really not a big deal. I try to use Bestial Wrath as much as possible along with Focus Fire and that certainly helps speed things along. Leveling as a hunter for me is like running an instance in miniature. Send your "tank" in. Get a HOT rolling on him. Misdirect to him if you're so inclined. Wait for him to build aggro a bit then blow the bad guys away. Rinse and repeat.

The shaman is going to be next, and looking at the various quest rewards, I think it should be fine leveling him as elemental. This whole expansion doesn't seem to be all that wildly friendly to melee classes. The more you can do to make the mob dead before it even gets to you, the better of you'll be at the end of the day. And elemental is all about making things dead fast.

I briefly debated sticking to resto with the Shaman and trying to level him purely through the dungeon finder just to compare the times. I might still go that route, but we'll see.

Level 85 #3

Well - finally managed to get the warlock to level 85 this morning. Very easy to level as affliction - just took a while because of other commitments. The actual leveling time was about two hours faster than the druid, so still improving.

Off to work on the hunter next.

Holiday Delay

So my leveling progress has slowed down a bit as I've been a bit distracted by the holidays. We've been out of town visiting family, so my game time has been limited to after bed time and sometimes during naps. My wife has also been using my laptop for her work during some of those times, so I'm experiencing some serious withdrawal.

I have managed to get the warlock to level 84, and just a few bars from 85. Leveling a warlock as affliction has been, without a doubt, the easiest Cataclysm leveling experience so far. I've also had the chance to run a few instances, where the combination of decent dps and a lot of different crowd control options have made them pretty smooth runs.

Not sure what my leveling time on the warlock will be just yet. I have been leveling both tailoring and enchanting as I've been going, so that likely will have taken some extra time. I'm no where close to max on either one, but I've got plenty of time, and seven more toons worth of leveling to provide the mats. I'm guessing it will come out somewhere between the paladin and the druid.

I should hit 85 in the next day or two, and over this weekend, I plan to finish gearing up my druid for heroics and get a few runs in on him. I think I may switch up my leveling plans just a bit and go with the hunter next instead of the shammy. I just need to get him to Uldum so I can start porting there rather than flying to do his alchemy transmutes.

Level 85 #2 - Boomkin!

I managed to get my second character to level 85 yesterday evening. It's an interesting read on how much it slows things down to start leveling on launch day. My total played time to 85 for my first toon, the paladin, was 35 hours. The total played time to 85 for the druid was 25 hours.

Now I think there were several factors at work here:

• First, the obvious delays caused by competing for mobs and quest objectives around launch day.
• Second, I leveled mining simultaneously on the paladin and did not move on to Deepholm until I had gotten my mining high enough to mine Elementium. This added probably about an hour to my leveling time, possibly more, as I spent time just searching for nodes which were being heavily camped in the first few days. I leveled skinning on the druid, which is much faster and easier.
  
• The first time through, I always tend to read the quest text and just enjoy the lore parts of it more.
• Sometime mid way through the process of leveling my first toon, my guild received the xp boost perk. That boost was in place for the entirety of leveling my druid.

When I leveled the druid to 80 initially, I leveled him as feral, but this time, I did the trip to 85 as a boomkin, since I was already rocking decent caster gear from my resto set. It was definitely an easier way to level for me, but I think I'm basically a caster at heart. Towards the end, I was getting Starsurge crits of around 40K, which really encourages those Twilight Highlands mobs to die much faster!

The new eclipse mechanic is also extremely easy to use and figure out. Just follow the bar back and forth and switch between Wrath and Starfire depending on which way you're heading on the bar. Mobs died very very quickly for me.

So, next I'm off to level the warlock. My plan is to at least start him off as affliction. Given how hard the mobs hit, I really think the self-healing abilities that come with affliction will boost my leveling speed nicely. While huge Conflagrate and Chaos Bolt crits that go with destruction are fun to watch, they'll tend to pull aggro off my voidwalker and just cause me trouble in the long run. So we'll see how it goes.

Ding! Level 85 #1

I managed to hit level 85 on my Paladin over the weekend. Total played time to 85 was about 35 hours, but that included time to level my mining. Also, the first time through, I spent a lot of time just reading the quest descriptions and enjoying the lore.

After finishing with my Paladin, I started on the Druid next, and have managed to get him to 82.

I started the Paladin in Mt. Hyjal and have been starting the Druid in Vash'jir. On the Paladin, particularly with Mt. Hyjal and Deepholm, I finished the zone before moving on to the next zone. Given that quest XP increases significantly from zone to zone, I don't think that's the most efficient way to do it. So as soon as you hit 82, you should really move straight to Deepholm, at 83 head to Uldum and at 84 head to Twilight Highlands. There are more than enough quests in each zone to be sure you get to the next level.

The other things that slowed me down on the Paladin is that I was also working on putting together a holy set while leveling, which took a lot of time to evaluate gear drops. I will likely have some of the same issues on the druid.

I've tried healing quite a few of the instances on my Paladin and have had pretty decent success so far. It was pretty hard at first, but figured out a few tricks that have helped a lot.

1. Beacon the tank so that you're getting the extra holy power from Tower of Radiance.
2. Use Holy Light - particularly if someone doesn't need a lot of healing. Use holy shock on others in the group to top them off when needed.
3. Light of Dawn or Word of Glory at 3 stacks depending on how much damage the group has taken.
4. Don't use Divine Light unless you get an Infusion proc.
5. Judge whenever you can. The mana return becomes really important.
6. Use your cooldowns - your guardian, hands, avenging wrath, etc. can make an enormous difference - particularly on boss fights.

I've been thinking about working on the warlock for a little bit just because I'm getting a little bit tired of watching out for two sets of gear. Although I will admit, Starsurge on the Boomkin is crazy fun!

Kudos on Darkshore

So as I mentioned earlier, with my Horde toons pretty much ready for Cataclysm, I've been working on leveling a couple of Alliance toons a bit. This week, I've been mostly focused on my Night Elf Hunter, and have gotten him to level 25. As part of that progression, he quested through Darkshore.

I may have done that once before on various Alliance toons that I've tinkered with in the past, but it hasn't been very recently. The questing experience there is really fantastic though. Without giving anything away, you get very involved in the Lore around the Cataclysm itself including helping Malfurion Stormrage directly with some quests.

You also get a couple of really nice blue quest rewards. Overall, so far, I'm really impressed with what Blizzard has done with the early questing experience. Making travel easier with more flight paths and some "nightsaber shuttle" options has also made the zone a lot easier for a player operating "pre-mount."

I've now moved onto Ashenvale with this toon and don't expect to get much further before Cataclysm. I was somewhat surprised to also discover that you can't use glyphs now until level 25. Not sure I remember seeing that in patch notes anywhere. Of course, glyphs have gotten so expensive on some servers now with the essential unavailability of the ink trader, that they're really not affordable unless you have an existing 80 sugar daddy supporting you. If we're talking first character, I could see you very easily getting into your 60's or 70's before being able to afford glyphs - particularly if you plan to buy flying skill right away at 60.

So, I'll be parking the paladin in Blackrock Mountain on Monday to pick up the entrance to Blackrock Caverns and will then start my leveling right away on Tuesday. Until then - more Alliance fun!

Two Whole Months!

Well - it has been more than two months now since my ninth toon hit level 80. I must say, it's driving me nuts. I was able to amuse myself a bit with PvP, and then worked on running dungeons on my various healers a bit, and finally, I've been working on maxing out gathering professions on any alts that didn't already have them. But even with that, the itch to level keeps popping back up. There's only a week left to go until Cataclysm and then I'll have another 45 levels to gain on my existing level 80's, and a full 85 levels to go on my new goblin warrior. You think I could just leave things alone.

But no. So - I snuck over to another server and have been working on leveling my alliance toons. I've been messing with the Death Knight since he was farthest along. I've managed to get him up to level 65, almost to 66. It's been pretty different, since the first time I leveled a Death Knight on the Horde side it was as Blood, and that all seemed to work really well for me.

But with Blood being the new tanking spec, it looks like Unholy or Frost are the candidates for leveling. My initial thought was to level as Unholy because of the advantage of the permanent pet.

When I hit 65, I switched over to dual-wield frost just to give it a try. I was incredibly surprised by how hard this new spec hits. Mobs are going down a lot faster, and as a result, I'm taking a lot less damage - which overall seems to equate to more uptime.

There's essentially no way I'm going to get this toon to 80 by Cataclysm, but I'm having fun at the moment.

Now that I think about it, I'm not real sure why I went with the Death Knight instead of trying out one of the new lower level starting areas - so I might change that and go with another class instead - maybe Hunter?

In any case, it'll give me something to do for a few days before the Cataclysm release.

I'm also making a few tweaks to my planned leveling order for Cataclysm, so here are the latest thoughts:

Paladin (right now, I'm just more comfortable healing on the paladin - so thinking this may be my dedicated raiding toon)
Druid
Warlock
Shaman
Hunter
Mage
Priest
Death Knight
Rogue
Goblin Warrior!

Note - I've moved the Death Knight close to the bottom for leveling purposes, but will still likely work on maxing his Blacksmithing ASAP so that he can craft gear for the paladin. I might still switch the order of Mage and Hunter, but right now I'm feeling pretty good about this list.

Hail Neltharion!

So I was working on mining on my rogue last night, hanging out in Thousand Needles, half hoping that Blizzard was going to do something cool the night before the Shattering patch dropped. Have Deathwing actually come screaming out of the Maelstrom and start messing things up a bit early. So, I was sitting there in Thousand Needles, with my surf board waxed and ready to go.

I was figuring, with the way that place is going to be flooding, once Deathwing does break out, that's going to be one heck of a wave. Would be a shame to miss it!

But, alas. The Earth-Warder, Deathwing the Destroyer, decided to stand me up instead. All I got was dust and scorpions (and a crap load of Tin and Iron Ore).

I was a bit disappointed to see that the requirements for Loremaster were going to be changing effective today. I'm guessing that's going to be off the table for me before Cataclysm at this point, but I guess we'll have to see what the numbers look like once the servers come back up.

My priorities continue to be getting the rest of my gathering professions maxed on my last two toons prior to launch. At this point, I just have mining on the rogue, and then mining and herbalism on the priest to go. If I had any sense at all, I'd just wait until after Cataclysm to do those on the priest. After all, it's probably going to be easier to do when you can fly around to do it.

I may also do a quick race / class change today as well. I will admit that I've never been a huge fan of blood elves, and when I go through my list of toons, it seems wrong for me personally that I have two blood elves and only one Orc - so I will likely change my blood elf mage to one of the new Orc mages!

I've also been debating the order that I'll be leveling my toons after the expansion hits. In case I want to run dungeon content, I will likely do the tanks and healers first, but I feel like Joar needs to be pretty high on the list as my original toon. So here is what I'm thinking:

Druid
Paladin
Warlock
Death Knight (maybe give tanking another try?)
Shaman
Hunter
Mage
Priest
Rogue

Given how much I enjoy both the priest and the mage, it seems odd to me that they're near the bottom of the list, but I guess part of the problem with being an altoholic is I really love all my classes! I could move the Death Knight down, switch to tanking on the paladin and move the priest way up to level as a healer. The only downside to that approach is the priest is the least geared of all my healer toons, so seems a bit risky. In any case, I'll likely be tweaking this list a bit over the next two weeks. The other advantage to the order above is it has all my crafters being leveled first.

Back on Loremaster

So I finished maxing out Mining on my paladin and have now switched to leveling both professions on my mage. I've also picked up working on Loremaster on Joar a bit. Curious to see if I can get it done before Cataclysm launches, although since it doesn't appear that it will be going away, there is a lot less pressure to get it finished up.

Here's where I stand on Loremaster:

Loremaster of Eastern Kingdoms: 218 quests to go
Loremaster of Kalimdor: 74 quests to go.

So 292 quests total. With 21 days left until Cataclysm, that would work out to 14 quests per day. Very doable. I finished up the Fallen Hero of the Horde quest line which was a lot of fun, and have been working through a few of those last things that I had done and not turned in. I was then going to focus on Eastern Kingdoms, as I know a lot of those have you running back and forth.

I also did what I expect will be my last raid pre-Cataclysm on the druid this weekend. I managed to get through Dreamwalker, which for me is very good. Did 21K hps on the druid, which I was very happy with. Was the only one going through the portals and still managed to get her down without any trouble. Had a Healing Touch hit for 122K! Holy pallies eat your heart out.

So, the plan for the next three weeks is to split time between Loremaster and finishing those last few gathering professions on the toons. Have skinning and herbalism to finish on the mage, mining on the rogue and will probably dual gather herbalism and mining on the priest. I might wait until after Catalcysm to do that one since it'll be a lot easier with flying, and I think I'm already adequately set for leveling the professions on my other toons. We'll see though.

Paladin Healing in 4.0.1

As much as I hate to say it, after spending a few weeks now running heroics as a healer on my druid, shaman and paladin after patch 4.0.1, my paladin may be replacing my druid as my favorite 5-man healer. I know all of you shammies out there are going to quickly tell me that I'm out of my mind - so I'm going to caveat this by saying that my shaman is currently grossly undergeared compared to my other two healers. If his gear was comparable, I might have a completely different feeling.

So it took a little while to get used to the new paladin healing mechanics, but I must say, the more I'm using it, the more I enjoy it now. Pre-patch, I used to Beacon the tank, keep Sacred Shield up on him and then just spam flash of light on the rest of the party. Dropping in the occasional Holy Light if damage got intense. I used Holy Shock very rarely, mostly when there was a lot of party-wide damage and I needed a quick "oh crap" heal.

Now, my approach is completely different. I'm trying to quickly judge which of the dps is not going to figure out not to stand in fire / black puddles, purple goop or whatever and I'm putting the beacon on them. I'm using Holy Shock whenever it is off cooldown to build up Holy Power and am then using Word of Glory on whoever needs it the most at that point (not always the tank). I'm only hitting Holy Light now whenever Infusion of Light procs after a Holy Shock crit. Beyond that, I'm using Flash of Light whenever the damage gets a bit heavy - it's a heavy mana drain, so that probably won't be the best approach later on, but for now, mana isn't even remotely an issue, so it works fine.

For the druid, for some reason I'm finding that none of my heals are hitting quite as hard as they did before. My rejuv ticks have lost just a little something and Nourish isn't the monster it once was. Lifebloom has become a beast though, so I'm using that on the tank a lot more aggressively. Regrowth is also more of an instant heal with a tiny HoT, so I'm using that in place of Nourish a lot if someone is getting low. Wild Growth seems to have gotten a lot more powerful, so I'm trying to use that a lot more, even in a 5 man setting. Oh, and I use Efflorescence a lot, just because it confuses people! My overall complaint with the druid is that I am still a beast at keeping an entire raid up, but the druid seems to have lost something in terms of being able to heal up big damage spikes.

I think my plan for when Cataclysm drops is to leave the warlock on the shelf for a bit and level these three healers first. I'm really anxious to try all of these out in Catalcysm dungeons, so I think they'll be my first ones out of the gate.

Shaman Healing Post Patch

So I tried Shaman healing in heroics for the first time post-patch, and for some reason it all now seems to click with me. I think the addition of Healing Surge as a big fast "oh crap" kind of heal just made a lot of difference for me. And for whatever reason, hitting Healing Wave the rest of the time seemed to work just a little bit better. And whatever mana issues I was having before have completely disappeared.

So, I ran a few helping a friend gear up his hunter and it all seemed to work well. I've also been finishing up the Wrathful set on my warlock - just the belt and boots still to go. I also have been putting off finishing up the last few gathering professions on my various toons, so I really need to focus on that over the next few weeks so I get them finished before December 7th so they're all ready to go for Cataclysm launch.

Also ran the pre-Cataclysm quest chain on my warlock. Was very disappointed that, at least for Horde, the quest chain ended with instructions to go tell Garrosh, because he'll be able to fix it. How about I go tell this sign-post, or that campfire instead. I think that might accomplish more. Or maybe I should enlist Gamon's help - seems like that might accomplish more as well. But Garrosh - please! I'd rather sneak into Stormwind and tell Varian Wynn.