Resuming After Vacation

My alliance army continues to move forward, with a large number of my characters breaking through into the high 20's and heading for that magical land of dual talent spec.  I continue to work on leveling the druid, paladin, shaman and priest through the dungeon finder primarily, which is working quite well at this point.

I'll be switching back to working on the hunter today after maintenance is complete.  My hunter is currently working his way through Howling Fjord, which has been fun since I've never done that zone on alliance before.

With no release date in MoP yet announced, I'm going to continue to work on each of these characters a little bit at a time, and then once a release date is announced, I'll probably switch and power the hunter to 85 so he's available for MoP upon release.

We still have a couple of days to go until the end of the month, but it looks like I'll finish up with around 60 levels for the month, which I'm pretty happy with given that my play time was pretty severely restricted for about half the month due to vacation and other issued.  If I can hit that same number or better in July, I'll be very happy with where these guys stand.

More Low Level Dungeon Advice, and Summer Vacation inc

So it's been another solid week for the advancement of my new alliance army.  I've continued to run a lot of random low level dungeons on my shaman, priest, bear and paladin, which of course is always fodder for great stories.

Here are where things stand as of today:

Hunter - 69
Druid - 21
Mage - 22
Paladin - 25
Priest - 22
Rogue - 22
Shaman - 20
Warlock - 25
Warrior - 20

So everyone is now fully mounted and running about much faster.  That's just a touch under 30 levels in about 10 days, so not bad.  Too bad that's going to slow down enormously as these guys get further along.  At some point, once it become more clear when MoP is going to release, I may start focusing on the hunter just to get him to 85 before release, but that's still feeling like September sometime, so I've got plenty of time.

It was an interesting weekend in the ole low level dungeon finder.  Not as many really good groups as I'd experienced previously, but that's always good fodder for more tidbits of wisdom for use in the low level dungeons.  So here are the latest pearls of wisdom:

• If you're a rogue, and you're not dual wielding, re-roll a paladin or warrior.  Rogues with only one weapon are not the latest thing.
• Zoned into an instance as a healer.  Three DPS - a druid in bear form, a hunter with his bear out and on auto-growl/thunderstomp and a warlock with his voidwalker out.   This braintrust was then incredibly surprised when the tank finally gave up and left.
• Apparently, if you keep running in and out of the instance like a moron, it makes you basically impossible to vote kick.  
• It's not good dungeon etiquette to roll need on everything, including stuff you can't use.  After the group has said something to you once, don't be surprised if you get vote kicked if you continue to do it.
• If the healer is dead, it's probably not the best time to pull the next group.  Especially if you're a bear tank wearing mostly intellect cloth.  As it turns out, it's not making you smarter.

So that's it for this week's installment.  I'm taking the family on vacation for the next week or so, so it'll be quiet from me for a bit..  But that's the joy of summer, right!

In the meantime, keep alt'ing along!

More Low Level Dungeon Lessons

Well - team Alliance marches on.  After ending my brief fling with SWTOR and deciding to refocus on WoW leveling, I've really been able to make excellent progress on my remaining 9 alliance characters.  The end results for May were a total of 60 levels in just about 2 weeks.

Here is where we stand as of today:

Hunter - level 66
Druid - 18
Mage - 19
Paladin - 22
Priest - 19
Rogue - 22
Shaman - 16
Warlock - 23
Warrior - 18

I've also been leveling the druid, shaman, priest, paladin and warrior primarily through dungeon finder, which has been an interesting process so far.  I must say, the addition of quest givers in all of the instances has greatly increased the viability of leveling through the instances and the speed at which that happens.

Fortunately, I started this process on my two healers first.  It's been a long time since I was in a low level dungeon, so I was very pleasantly surprised to discover that mana isn't nearly the issue that it used to be for low level dungeon healers.  In fact, as long as the group had a semi-competent tank and the dps weren't too ridiculously trigger happy, I could pretty comfortably heal through anything.  Power Word: Shield and Renew, Earth Shield and Healing Wave.  All worked fine at keeping the tanks up and topping off any dps that decided to pull someone they shouldn't.

The experience tanking hasn't been quite as positive.  Having healed a fair amount at end game and more heroics than I probably want to think about has probably given me quite a bit of an edge in terms of healing low level dungeons, but I've been pretty surprised by some of the other groups that I've encountered as a tank.  Let me preface the below sarcastic onslaught by saying that the majority of my experiences tanking low level instances have still be pretty positive and I've had some very good groups. 

So, more lessons for low level dungeoneering:

• Warlocks - if you're running an instance with your voidwalker out, you're doing it wrong.  Please re-roll a mage.
• If you queued as a healer, strangely enough, your primary responsibility should be to heal.  And the primary focus of your healing should usually be the tank.  If you are wandering around searching for Serpentbloom, you are doing it wrong.  If you are three bosses in, and haven't cast a single healing spell, see above.
• Even if priests are allowed to need on strength mail, doesn't mean you should be doing it.
• Hunters - just because you're bows can shoot really far - doesn't mean you should constantly be trying to shoot whatever is farthest away.  Try shooting in the direction of whatever group the tank is currently pulling.  You'll find that mobs don't come and eat your face quite as often.
• Intellect cloth does not make you a smarter tank.

That's it for now.  I'll be spending a lot more time in low level instances this coming weekend, which I'm sure will generate another wealth of valuable tips and tricks.

Good progress

This past week, I've continued to make great progress on leveling my various alliance characters.  I've managed to push my hunter all the way to level 66, just questing in Hellfire and Zangarmash.  I'm likely going to delay taking him to Northrend until level 70, not because that's necessarily more efficient, but because I'm extremely tired of questing in Northrend.

My lower level toons are all working their way nicely through their respective starting areas and I've had a few that have hit 20 and gotten their mounts.

I'm debating switching to dungeon leveling for a number of my toons including bear druid, paladin, priest and shaman.  I never really did dedicated dungeon leveling on any of my characters, so I'm curious to see how it goes for long periods of time.  Plus, I'm interested in trying low level tanking and healing on a variety of different characters.  I'm going to wait till level 18 to start on my bear druid so that he has swipe before I try.  The others, I might just jump right in.  Of course, the druid is sitting at 17 right now, so we're not talking about a lengthy wait.

How They Breeze By

Ah the low levels are fun.  They just sort of breeze by.  A total of 18 levels in 6 days.  And I wasn't playing all that much for most of that time.  If only all the levels went so quickly.

I've been making really good progress through the lower levels on most of my alliance characters.  I've also figured out an easy way to keep track of all of their professions and have just lined them up exactly with all of my Horde characters, making it extremely simple to keep track of who has which profession.

I'm going to switch back to some of the slightly more challenging fare though and work on pushing my Hunter further through Outlands.  We'll see how that goes.

Leveling Alts Before MoP

Having achieved a lot of my goals for Cataclysm much earlier than I thought I would, I've been playing a lot of SWTOR lately.  I managed to get a Republic Trooper to the level cap, and I'm well on my way to having an Imperial Agent there as well.  During that time, my WoW activity has been limited to doing some auction house crafting activities each morning and running LFR on a couple of toons once a week.

However, I'm starting to get a little bored with the questing and leveling experience in SWTOR and I find myself coming back to WoW, like returning to and comfortable old blanket.  It really surprises me that I'm getting bored with running the quests on Dromund Kaas for the third time, but I seem to have no issue at all doing the same quests in Hellfire Peninsula for the 12th or 13th time in some cases.  Perhaps it is the familiarity, perhaps it's because WoW just seems more polished and runs better on my machine.  Some of it is certainly that the extended dialogue scenes at each quest pick up and turn in get to be tiresome and time consuming after a while.

The whole experience has really made me appreciate how polished and refined the questing experience has become in WoW.

I think part of it too is that in SWTOR you are constantly faced with a lot of Light Side / Dark Side ethical decisions impacting what appear to be real people, not fantasy creatures.  I play these games for entertainment and for escape from the difficult decisions of the real world.  I'm not sure I'm looking to be making those in my game too.

So I'm turning back to WoW, and I see that I have a whole stable full of alliance characters just waiting to be leveled!  So I'm going to dive back in and see how far I can get before the MoP drops.

I've already gotten my alliance Death Knight to 85, so I've got 9 characters left to go.  Here's where they currently stand:

Hunter - level 61
Paladin - level 16
Warlock - level 13
Rogue - level 13
Warrior - level 12
Mage - level 12
Druid - level 10
Shaman - level 10
Priest - level 10

At least in theory, at my normal pace, I should be able to gain 123 levels between now and when MoP launches, assuming a mid-September release.  That should allow me to get my hunter to 85 along with one other toon, and make pretty decent progress on yet another, or I could mess with all of them just a little bit.

We'll see how it goes.  I'm also going to take this opportunity to try out a few new addons that might be helpful for leveling and will report back here what I find in that category.

The End of A Bad Series of Rolls

So on the 41st attempt, I finally managed to win the roll for the tier shoulders on my death knight, ending an impressive string of futility.  This boosted my average iLvL by an impressive 3 points, by upgrading from my ZA/ZG shoulders and also by allowing me to switch from the tier head piece to the valor head piece.

So I now only need two more pieces of gear on the death knight, both of which can be obtained from the last half of LFR.

I'm debating which character to work on gearing next, but I think I've settled on working on the rogue, since that playstyle seems to match up better with my connection / lag issues.  Anything with a long cast time tends to be death for my dps.

Right now, SWTOR is holding my attention from a leveling standpoint, but there is at least a chance I might go back to working on Alliance characters prior to MoP release.

A Fabulous Streak of Futility

So I completed almost all of LFR last night on my Death Knight.  The Tier Shoulders dropped twice more, and twice more I lost the rolls.  That now brings me to 0-40 rolling on upgrade shoulders in LFR - either Tier or the Backbreaker Spaulders.  This streak is now becoming such an awesome thing that I'm almost going to be sad if and when I ever do when new shoulders.  We'll have to see!

I've also apparently gotten pretty spoiled with decent LFR groups over the last few weeks, because I had one of the most horrible ones that I've seen in a while.  We had two dps in the group that were only auto-attacking the entire time.  Plus the normal stuff on Spine with one or two idiots killing multiple corruptions, and a tank that wouldn't hold the Amalgamation next to the plates.

So, I still have Spine and Madness to finish this week, so that 40 total could conceivably go up a bit before it's all done.

Addons For Leveling

There's just not much to talk about these days while waiting what is probably another 3 or 4 months for the next expansion to drop. Right now, I'm actually a little more focused on leveling a few of my SWTOR toons (gotta love the Legacy system - a game that actively rewards altoholics!).

In the meantime, I'm getting all of my toons prepped for the eventual drop of MoP (hehe..that rhymes). What that means right now is getting their bags cleaned out and making sure they've got the best bags available. Same thing with bank space.

Finally, I'm also going through and checking the addons that I used while leveling. There are not a lot of them, but thought this would be a good time to run through the ones that I use.

Carbonite: This isn't as useful now as it used to be with all of the additions to the Blizzard quest objective system. However, I still prefer it over the default, so it's generally the tool that I use to help with spotting and completing quests.

ArkInventory: This is the bag addon that I use. I find the customization options that it provides along with the ability for search for items across all of your toons and their various banks to be invaluable while leveling. It lets me easily keep track of what materials I have where that I may need to leveling crafting skills later on.

CrapAway: There are a lot of addons that do this, but this is the one that I tend to use. Does the simple task of selling all of your gray items every time you visit a vendor. Still not sure why Blizzard hasn't built this into the basic UI yet.

DotTracker: This is a new one for me, but one that I've grown to love. It's a simple addon that lets you keep track of your dots on a mob and notifies you right in the middle of your screen when they need to be refreshed. More useful in dungeons than while questing, but for those tougher mobs, it always helps to have a reminder.

Bartender: My action bar mod of choice. I've tried some of the others like Dominos, but I always seem to come back to Bartender at the end of the day. I love the customization and the ease of setting things up, particularly key bindings, bar size and location.

Gatherer: If you're going to be leveling any kind of gathering profession while questing, this is a great addon. It tracks and stores the locations of any mining or herbalism that either you or your guildies come across and will display them on your map. Also includes the ability to download existing node maps from places like Wowhead.

MakeRoom: If you do end up running out of space in your bags, this nice little addon will automatically suggest the lowest value gray items to be destroyed and take care of getting rid of them for you.

MikScrollingBattleText: I still just don't like the default Blizzard combat text. Mainly because I like to see which of my abilities are hitting for how much.

Pawn: This is a nice little addon that has a default set of stat weightings for each class (which can be modified / customized) and will use those stat weightings to let you judge whether a particular piece of gear (quest reward or drop) is an upgrade for you.

Tidy Plates: I use the Threat version of Tidy plates. It lets you easily keep track of which mobs are coming after you while questing and fighting.

Titan Panel: I use this primarily to track my xp per hour while questing, which I use to compare my approaches - questing, versus dungeons versus PvP. It also shows me the gold that I have on hand across my various toons if I need to move some cash around.

And that's basically it. Those are the addons that I find to be particularly helpful while questing and leveling.

The Unachievable Shoulders

So the only piece of T13 gear that I'm missing on my Death Knight at this point is the shoulders. And I seem to have quite the unlucky streak going with respect to roles on upgrade shoulders of any kind.

At last count, I'm now 0-34 on rolls for either Tier, or other usable raid finder shoulders. So I'm still rocking the good old 353's out of ZG/ZA.

At this point, it's such an amazing streak, that it would almost be a shame to win them. As much as I'd love to switch from the Tier helm to the valor helm, my quest for upgraded shoulders is taking on a futility that is almost Chicago Cub-like at this point.

So I'm going to keep trying until I end up replacing them with a quest green early in MoP. May as well keep the streak alive.

On more positive news, I finally got a second piece of Tier on my warlock, who now has his 2 piece set bonus and as a result will be spending a lot more cuddle time with his Doomguard.

I've also been running stuff now and then on the rogue, because the mechanics of that class seem to work well with my bad internet connection as well. He's only got one piece of Tier at this point though, so he has a way to go from a gearing standpoint.

A Strange Reason for Abandoning My Warlock

So Cynwise recently wrote a fantastic post and follow up questioning where all of the warlocks have gone and why.

Where Did All the Warlocks Go In Cataclysm

Leveling Data on Warlocks is Worse Than I Thought

I'd encourage everyone to click through and read these, but the initial conclusion seems to be that warlocks are doing just fine in PvE and actually doing really well in PvP, but that for some reason there is a very significant drop off in people that are leveling their warlocks to 85, or playing them once they get to 85.

The posts made me think of my own situation. My warlock was my very first max level character in WoW, way back in Burning Crusade. I hit level 70 out in Netherstorm. It was also the very first toon that I raided on, running Kara and ZA and it was also my first toon to 80 in Wrath and the first toon that I raided on in Wrath.

There are two things that changed though. Over the course of Wrath, I leveled 8 more toons to max level (every class but warrior) and began to raid more on my druid rather than my warlock. It was just easier to get a raid spot with a healer than it was as dps.

So in the early days of Cata, my original main, my warlock, was actually not the first character that I pushed through to max level - he was actually the third - after my paladin and my druid. Despite that, I found healing in the early days of Cataclysm to be very frustrating and went back to playing on my warlock until something very interesting happened.

As part of leveling my death knight, I started to run more instances on the Death Knight and found that I was getting significantly better results on the Death Knight than I was on the warlock. There were two things causing that. First, the return of crowd control required me to spend a lot of time recasting fear on various mobs. Being the shortest duration crowd control out there (relative to sheep, or ice trap) it requires a lot of time to focus and refresh so the mobs don't run wild in your group. And time spent refreshing fear is time that you're not spending nuking bad guys.

The other thing that I noticed was something very specific to me and my play style. I tend to travel a lot for work, so I'm very often playing on a laptop on somewhat questionable hotel internet. The thing that I immediately found with a class like the Death Knight is that the lack of a cast time for any of my abilities significantly improved my dps.

Particularly playing my warlock as destro, I've got three of my key abilities - Immolate, Chaos Bolt and Incinerate, that have fairly significant cast times. And that's going to be the case no matter what spec you are playing. What I found was that any lag or low framerates that I was experiencing because of my travel situation had a fairly large impact on my dps because of those cast times, but those issues went away almost completely on the Death Knight.

So I set the warlock aside and started running more on the Death Knight and eventually on the rogue as well. Because abilities with no cast time is a lot more forgiving when you're not playing in the perfect environment.