And Now For a New Baby Joar

I managed to hit level 85 on my Rogue on Friday. His leveling time wasn't particularly fast - coming in at 6/9 of the toons that I've done so far - but I think that likely has as much to do with some of the personal distractions while leveling as the essence of the character. I also initially took a shot at some battlegrounds just to see what the xp per hour would be. It didn't take long to figure out that it was going to be a lot less, so I quickly switched by to questing.

One thing to note here - just because of the timing of when I hit 85 on my 8th toon and when I was working on this one - there was not a Call to Arms Battleground weekend at any point in my leveling process - so results on xp per hour for battlegrounds might have been higher taking advantage of that.

So now I'm off to do something that I haven't done in a while and that is level a toon all the way from 1. So is born my new goblin warrior - Joarmama. Credit to my guildy Tyronwa for coming up with the name. Seems perfect for a goblin warrior!

Anyway - he's outfitted in a full set of BoAs and is off to the races. Managed to get him to level 13 during the day on Friday. I didn't really play much at all this past weekend, but we'll see how far I can get him over the next week or so.

There is part of me that is debating at level 15 switching and leveling him strictly through the Dungeon Finder tool as a tank. It's something I've never been particularly good at, but I can't help thinking if I just focused on doing that and nothing but, I might have better results at end-game. And, I'm really in no major hurry to get this last toon to 85. As I understand it, the next expansion probably isn't going to be out in the next month or two - so I've got plenty of time to get this last toon all the way there.

Ding! Level 85 #8

So I managed to hit level 85 on the mage on Monday making him my 8th character to achieve that. I'll now be moving on to my last level 80 - my rogue.

Leveling the mage was fairly easy as well. I leveled him as frost and that continues to be a very durable leveling spec. Lot's of "oh shit" buttons that you can push if things start to go bad. His total leveling time from 80-85 was 22 hrs and 27 minutes, which puts him in 3rd of the 8 toons that I've leveled so far. I also managed to max both his skinning and herbalism during the leveling process, so that included time for that.

On the rogue, after looking things over, I'm planning to level him as combat. I expect he's going to be a bit of a challenge in the early going as he's still sitting mostly in quest greens from Northrend and sporting a whopping 16K health. On the other hand, with Improved Recuperate from the Combat Tree combined with Deadly Momentum from the Assassintation tree, I should be able to just grind away with Recuperate and Slice and Dice constantly refreshed. Should make him a formidable leveling machine.

This may be one of those classes and toons where its actually more efficient to just grind on mobs rather than necessarily completing quests. Of course, you lose out on the quest rewards that way, but I may still do a bit more grinding than normal.

The rogue has mining and engineering as his professions, so will likely work on those a bit along the way as well.

Level 85 #8 - Mage

So I managed to get to level 85 on the mage yesterday. Leveling as frost continued to be very easy. I

Level 85 #7 - Death Knight

Hit 85 on the Death Knight finally yesterday and have already gotten going on the mage, who is almost to 81. The Death Knight was very easy to level, and ended up being my second fastest leveling time despite leveling mining all the way to max.

I stockpiled what I gathered and will come back to leveling blacksmithing later on.

I did try a handful of dungeons on the death knight just to see if my previous conclusions on xp per hour had changed. In both cases, the dungeon resulted in a significant drop in xp per hour.

When I start the rogue for my final toon, I may try doing some battlegrounds on the rogue, just to see what the difference is there.

In the case of the DK, during Deepholm and Uldum, running instances dropped my average xp per hour to right around 1 million, from 1.5 million which is what I was easily hitting while questing. And to drop the average to that, the total xp per hour while running dungeons must actually be much lower than 1 million.

Leveling as Unholy

It's been a long time since I originally leveled my Death Knight. When I first leveled him, back in the early days of Wrath, Blood was the optimal leveling spec. Now, with the release of Cataclysm, all that has changed. Blood is now the tanking spec and what seems to be the best leveling spec is unholy.

Interestingly enough, it doesn't really seem to change that much about the ease with which Death Knights can mow through questing content. The addition of a permanent pet only helps things. I'm lacking a lot of the self-healing abilities that I remember fondly from Blood, so I'm having to sit and eat or bandage more often than I remember, but other than that, things have been remarkably smooth.

I've also been having lots of fun popping Army of the Dead on some of those elite quest bosses. It's really complete overkill, but it's fun, so I don't really care.

I've also been working on his Mining and Blacksmithing a bit (so I expect his leveling time to fall behind the priest). There's a lot more Obsidium in Hyjal than I remember. Might have something to do with the fact that the last time I leveled a miner through Hyjal was on launch day. Could be that.

So, all in, I've managed to get the Death Knight to level 82 and he's working his way through Deepholm.

I also finally got my epic trinket from Hellscream's Reach / Tol Barad on my warlock, so I'm pretty much just focused on Dragonmaw and Ramkahen dailies as well as the fishing and cooking dailies now. My ability to run heroics continues to be extremely limited, but hopefully I can rectify that soon and power through the rest of that Ramkahen rep.

On to the Death Knight!

Hit 85 on the shadow priest today - so that's #6! Interestingly enough, it was also my fastest leveling time to date. My total played time to 85 from 80 was 21 hrs, 28 minutes.

My previous best was the enhance shaman at 23 hrs, 10 minutes. Of course, there were two different elements to this. I don't have any professions on this toon, so no extra time for that. I also didn't do a single dungeon on this toon.

So, now I'm on to the death knight.

Bad Altoholic...Bad

I've been a particularly bad altoholic lately, having stopped leveling my remaining army of alts and have instead been messing around with gearing up my warlock. The sad thing is - I'm not even sure why I'm doing it. I have absolutely no intention of raiding on this toon. I do enjoy running heroics on him every now and then when I have time - so it's probably just a desire to get myself in a better position for heroics.

In any case, over the last week, I managed to get him to Exalted with both Therazane and Earthen Ring, which opened up a nice set of epic gloves as well as stylin' new shoulder enchants from the Stonemother herself.

I'm also just a step away from Exalted with Hellscreams reach, although I need about 70 more commendations before I can get the epic trinket that I want. Again - not even sure why I want this stupid trinket. It's all about hit, and I'm already hit capped for heroics. But - I should be able to unreforge hit to haste or something else on a bunch of gear, so I guess it's all good.

I also maxed my tailoring and accumulated enough Dreamcloth to make an epic belt and I'm half way to having enough for the epic pants. I'm tempted to work on gearing my hunter next. For some reason, I still just don't enjoy healing on either my paladin or my druid all that much, and there's so much good daily questing to do for nice shinies, that I don't really mind the longer dungeon queues.

Plus, it guarantees that I'll have at least one dps in the group that knows how to crowd control and move out of fire on the ground, which is one more than I often get when I'm healing.

I did manage to get another level on my shadow priest, so he's at level 83 now and working his way through Uldum. A few interesting observations on the shadow priest. With the healing reductions to Vampiric Embrace, he's not quite the indestructible tank he was questing through Wrath. In Wrath, I took no net damage at all while questing. Now that's not the case.

The thing that I've really been enjoying on the shadow priest though is with the addition of Mind Spike, I found that there are really two different play styles available to you while leveling. One is what I would call the traditional shadow priest style. Loading your targets up with dots and slowly destroying them from the inside. Vampiric Touch, Shadow Word: Pain, Mind Flay, Devouring Plague and Mind Blast when your shadow orbs proc. Dark Evangelism procs. Big fun.

The addition of Mind Spike has provided another leveling style that I call the Shadow Mage. Big quick casting nukes. Stuff gets hit hard and dies fast. Mind Spike, Mind Spike, Mind Spike, instant cast Mind Blast. BOOM! And the best part of this is it really requires no changes in spec, gear, talents, glyphs..nothing, to switch back and forth between these two options. I can alternate it on individual mobs if I want to. You're mastery and dark evangelism are basically wasted with this style. But it's still a lot of fun to be a nuking Shadow mage!