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.