Ding! Level 85 #12

So I managed to hit 85 on my alliance hunter finally today.  My total played time to 85 was 3 days, 19 hours which is without a doubt an all-time record.  Clearly the nerfs to the Cataclysm zone leveling time had a big impact here as I suspect it decreased my time through Uldum and Twilight Highlands by probably 7 hours total.

So I'm going to go back into the rotation and continue working on the other 8 toons for the next 10 days or so until MoP drops.

I'm still also working through what my rotation is going to be for the toons to get to 90 once MoP releases in a little over a week now.

Here's my current thinking:

Warlock
Shadow Priest
Death Knight (these three are the toons that I currently tend to raid / run dungeons on the most, so I think it makes sense to get these three to max level the most quickly)

The non-gathering professions covered by these 3 include Tailoring, Enchanting, Alchemy and Blacksmithing.

I think the next set is really going to be profession driven, so here's what I'm thinking for the next group:

Paladin (jewelcrafter)
Hunter (alchemist as well)

Shaman (inscriptionist)
Druid (leatherworker)

then the last 3 are just all gathering profession toons, so what I'm thinking will be:

Mage
Rogue
Warrior

I'll then probably go ahead and do a Horde panda monk before switching to my alliance toons, where I will likely do Hunter and then Death Knight on the Alliance side.

Ding! Rift Level 50 #1

So my mage finally hit level 50 on Rift yesterday.  Total played time to 50 was 3 days and 5 hours, which makes it one of the fastest times to max level of any MMO that I've played recently.  Compare that for example to 6 days and 5 hours for SWTOR and times that tend to be around 4 days for now for WoW.

So now I'm tasked with figuring out what to do with this character now that I've leveled them.  I don't have any of my professions maxed, so that seems to be a good first step.  There are also two pretty interesting epic quest lines that I've gotten started on.  I'm not yet geared enough to do expert dungeons, so I'm left waiting for normal dungeon random queues to try to gear up for experts, while I sell off stuff from my gathering professions to try to get enough gear to qualify for experts.

All in all, it's quite a bit to do.  There are also several factions that have daily quests that eventually can reward mounts and nice enchants at various rep levels.

Cataclysm XP nerf with 5.0.4

Just wanted to put up a quick post here to confirm that they xp nerfs for the Cataclysm zones are officially in place as of last weeks patch.  I had parked my hunter prior to the patch in Uldum at about 3.1 million xp, which had him a little more than half way there before, but after the patch, I logged in to find him just a quest or two shy of dinging 84.

So I quickly knocked out a few and then he's off to Twilight Highlands, which show around 5 million xp to 85 instead of the normal 10 million.

I've mostly been messing around with my various toons and their new talents and glyphs lately though.

I've been really pleased with my destro spec on my warlock.  Significantly less to manage in terms of buffs and cooldowns and if I time my embers and chaos bolts right on damage vulnerability phases (Black Blood on Zonozz, after lightning or ice on Hagara) I can really put out some ridiculous numbers chaining 4 quick Chaos Bolts together.

I haven't had the chance to try too much on the shadow priest at this point, although I'm anxious to try that as well.

I've also been playing a decent amount of Rift during patch times for WoW and have my mage just a bar or two from 50 at this point.  I still need to go back to do professions for the mage, but I'm anxious to see what expert dungeons are like.  I'm debating finishing up my Outfitter skill.  While it does give you the ability to make some nice gear, it seems to be avaiable pretty cheap on the auction house.  So I'm debating just using gathering skills or maybe Apothecary and just use plat to buy whatever gear I need.