Mists of Pandaria - Impact on Leveling

I've gone back to leveling my alliance toons a bit.  I keep thinking I'd like to get at least one, if not more of my alliance characters to 85, especially given the emphasis that the new expansion seems to be placing on the conflict between Alliance and Horde, I'm really hoping for some difference in content through MoP for the two factions - certainly more than we saw in Cataclysm where it was mostly limited to a few quests in Twilight Highlands.

I've put leveling the Death Knight on hold until 4.3 rolls around to take advantage of the reduced leveling time through Northrend.  So in the meantime, I'll try to get as many of my alliance toons to Outland as I can.  It may not be more than one, but we'll see.

As a casual player, I was very interested to see what would be out there for me in the new expansion.  I certainly like the idea of a new race and class to play, although I'm hoping Blizzard follows through with the idea of opening up more slots on any given server so I can continue to have one of each class on a particular server.

I think the new talent system will actually make leveling a little bit easier since it will reduce the points at which a decision needs to be made during the process.  It seemed like at each phase, the decision you will be facing will be more impacted by your personal style and how you'd like to level rather than the need to pick any particular talent at each stage in order to be able to level effectively.

No longer having to train for spells will also be a huge time saver.  Right now, in the quest path from 1-60 especially, there really aren't any points where you need to return to a major city anymore, so I can often end up going quite a while without picking up a new spell.  Eliminating that will help a great deal.  The only downside to this approach that I could see is if you're trying to level a profession at the same time, you'll have to return anyway.  Scattering profession trainers throughout the world would help a lot with that.

I think the simplification of the weapons slots for various classes will also make the decision making on gear while leveling much more straightforward.  Hopefully, Blizzard is able to take the time to tweak the quest rewards while leveling a bit to make sure there are enough wands and ranged weapons available for the classes that will now need those more.

Finally, the elimination of minimum range for hunters will make a class that already levels quickly even more formidable.  Combine that with the ability to designate any pet as tenacity, ferocity or cunning, and you should be able to grab any pet you want and make it do what you need.

Add On for Death Knight DPS

For those of you that like to DPS on your Death Knights, I just recently discovered a nice little add on that has helped a lot with my rotation, particularly on boss fights, and has had a pretty noticeable increase on my DPS. The add on is called CLC DK and is available on Curse.com and Wowinterface.

It functions very much like Shock and Awe, and addon that has been used by enhance shammies for quite a while. It basically suggests the spell to use next based on priority rankings right in front of you on your screen. It also provides a better graphical tracking of your runes and can help track various cooldowns including Pillar of Frost.

If you haven't used it, I'd urge you to give it a try. The only downsides is it seems focused particularly on single target, so it's not necessarily prompting you to hit pestilence to spread your diseases. I also haven't figured out a way to get it to incorporate Blood Tap or Empower Rune Weapon in its suggestions, but I'm thinking I might just be missing that at this point.

Ah - Fresh Meat!

So I love Hallows End. And not just because it has another quick and easy mini-boss with a chance to drop nice shinies. I fully expect this to be the second consecutive holiday where I get every nice shiny item possible on every toon except my main. That's the risk you run being an altoholic I guess.

No, my real reason for my intense love of Hallows End has to do with the number of resilienceless players flocking to the battlegrounds to get those honorable kills for the world event achievement. Yum. Fresh meat in da house. Easy kills, standing out in the open, just waiting for me to frost bolt them, slide my dagger in their back and then set them on fire. OK, that might have all been on different toons, but it's still all fun.

It looks like there are no less than 3 new pets that can be obtained this year from Hallows End. A Creepy Crate that's obtainable at the end of a quest line that starts in the Inn in Orgrimmar. Then there are two that are purchasable with the Tasty Treats that drop from the boss each day and that can be obtained from completing quests and from trick or treating at pumpkins in various cities.

Besides getting started on Hallows End, I've mostly been working on professions on my last two toons that don't have them - my priest and my warrior. I've started leveling herbalism and alchemy on the priest and currently have them both in the 400's. I picked those two to have the extra daily transmute cooldown - either for epic gems, truegold as well as living elements. All are nice money makers for me, but I'm expecting epic gems to be a nice money maker after the next patch drops.

I'm currently debating whether to do the same thing on my warrior or whether to just pick up two gathering professions to feed the others. If that is the route, it'll likely be mining and skinning as those seemed to be the two where I was running short early in Cata for leveling my crafters.

A Bit of a Pause

Not much to report lately. Things have been very busy at work, so my play time has been very limited. I've mostly been running instances on my death knight working on gearing him the rest of the way for PvE via 5 mans. He did manage to get his first piece of T12 the other day which was very exciting.

I've continued to do a decent amount of PvP and the mage and warlock are both in full Vicious now. I'll probably be working on the shaman and the priest next.

I'm also closing in on the 60,000 HK mark across all my toons which is pretty exciting.

I haven't been doing much Rift at all lately. WoW seems to have grabbed my attention again at least for now. Maybe it's all this talk of 4.3.

More Rift Leveling

On the World of Warcraft front, I've continued to run Coren Direbrew every day with the hopes of getting one of the mounts for my warlock. I've literally had one of the stupid mounts drop on all 9 of my other level 85's at this point, but so far nothing for Joar - the only toon on which I actually collect mounts. Oh well. RNG at its finest.

Beyond that, I haven't been doing much on the WoW front other than the occasional battleground or 5 man. I was toying with restarting leveling my alliance toons, but with the impending nerf to Northrend leveling, it seemed better to wait. I have started working on professions on my last two toons that don't currently have any. I'm likely going to do herbalism and alchemy on both just to have three sets of transmute cooldowns to work with.

On Rift, I've started focusing more on trying to get my Mage to max level before I pick up with my Cleric again. I did manage to run my first dungeon on the mage. Imagine my surprise when my queue actually popped while leveling. So I did a nice easy Kings Breach run. Didn't have anything that I could use drop, or get anything particularly good from the chest, but it was still a lot of fun, and really decent xp as near as I could tell.

So the mage is sitting at level 34 and getting ready to head to Moonshade Highlands.