Rep Grind Complete

So I finally managed to finish getting all of the current Pandaria faction reps to Exalted on my main this past week as I finished out the August Celestials faction.  Just in time for a brand new faction to drop today with Patch 5.1.  Woo hoo!

Overall, the process took me just a little under two months.  That doesn't include doing dailies every day, but probably on average around 4-5 days per week.

I've now started the process anew on another toon - my shadow priest.  So I'm looking forward to the reputation bonus that I'll get from already being at revered with every faction on another toon.

For the shadow priest, I'm just going to be doing the four factions that are directly relevant to valor point gear - Golden Lotus, Klaxxi, Shado-Pan and August Celestials.  I'm already almost to revered with Klaxxi and just hit Honored with Golden Lotus.

I've also been working on leveling the paladin and he's about half way to 89 working his way through Townlong Steppes.  I gave up on leveling as holy at about level 87 as it just wasn't scaling very well.  Mobs were taking way too long to die, especially compared to how quickly I can mow things down as ret.

As an altoholic, patch 5.1 contains quite a few things of interest.  The main thing for me is going to be the rep bonuses given that I already have all factions at revered or better on my main.  I'm also looking forward to the new faction and new content in Krasarang.  Finally, the new questline for warlocks and three new scenarios are all positives for me.

I still haven't touched pet battles at all, so the changes there aren't going to impact me, at least for now.

Ding! Level 90 #4

So I managed to get my shadow priest to level 90.  This post is a little bit late as I actually got there last Thursday.  So far, the shadow priest continues the trend from Cata of being my fastest character to level, finishing the 85 - 90 stretch in 20.5 hours.  That also surpassed his speed from 80-85 in Cata by about 1 hour, although unlike Cata, this time I completed both of his professions while leveling as well (although, honestly, with Alchemy, they've made that incredibly easy this time as long as you start with a nice sized supply of crystal vials).

I'm now back to focusing on the holy paladin.  I also did a little bit of work gearing up the shadow priest over the weekend.  I stocked him with epic chest and gloves and managed to get a few drops from heroics, but so far have found him to be pretty unlucky with the heroic drops.  He's still sitting 2 points short of being ready to queue for LFR.

The paladin recently hit 87 and is off to Kun-Lai.  The druid is up next after the paladin and after that will be the mage.  I don't think I'm very likely to hit my original target of having all 10 existing 85's to 90 by Christmas, but I'll be fairly close.

I'm also anxious to try the new LFR raid instance after the servers come up later today.  The one thing that my warlock really still needs is a weapon, and there appear to be options on every boss in the new instance.

Paladin Leveling as Holy

So I'm doing something this expansion that I've never really done before with characters making that incremental jump between max levels - leveling a couple of different toons simultaneously.  In the past, I've always just knocked them out one at a time, but this time around, I've been putting some down, picking others up and moving a couple forward together. 

It doesn't really matter, it all comes down to what you enjoy, and if you strategically park them in an inn each time, it probably improves your rested xp performance.

So while I've been pushing my shadow priest to max level (he's now sitting about half way to 89), I've also started to level both my druid and my paladin.  To avoid gear confusion as well as having to carry around two sets of gear, I decided to do something really strange, at least for me, and that is level my paladin as holy.

It's always my intention to heal on the paladin once he gets to max level, so with some of the new changes to holy paladins, I thought I'd give leveling as holy a try. 

So far it has worked out extremely well.  I'm primarily questing still - so we're not talking about running dungeons or PvP - just straight up killing mobs and questing.  The combination of Judgment, Holy Shock and Denounce and finishing them off with Hammer of Wrath seems to be killing mobs pretty quickly.  It actually feels slightly faster than my Blood DK was at killing things, and every bit as indestructible.  Huge self heals available essentially all the time.  The only downside at all is that I have effectively no AoE to use, but at least for now, that doesn't seem to be much of an issue.  If I'm pulling too many humanoids, I can always Repentance one and finish them off as my leisure.

He's just recently hit 86 and headed for Valley of the Four Winds, so I'm anxious to see how this model fares against vermin swarms.

In the meantime, my warlock is down to only two factions still to get to exalted - Shado-Pan and August Celestials.  I've got two days left on Shado-Pan and about 11 on August Celestials.

Exalted with Klaaxi

So I managed to hit exalted with Klaaxi on my main yesterday.  After running through the normal set of dailies, I was coming up about 90 rep short, but then remembers I hadn't done the "hidden" quest for the day, so went back and took down the big elite Kuchong to pick up his drop quest.  One turn in later, and I was at exalted.

The final quest for Klaaxi, like Golden Lotus was pretty interesting, involving a battle outside the Heart of Fear.  Then, a quick behind the scenes tour of the hidden parts of Klaaxi'vess with one of the paragons and a nice epic ring to show for it all.  Along with a shiny amber scorpion mount if you're willing to fork over 7,000g for it.

I can't really tell if it's any different than the guild rep scorpion mount in anything other than color, so I'm holding off before deciding if it's something that I want.

So I'm down to only two sets of dailies to run every day - Shado-Pan and August Celestials.  So this means I'll be back to running heroics on a regular basis in order to make sure I get valor capped for the week.

So if I'm doing the math right, I end up with 5 Shado-Pan quests per day, and 4 August Celestials quests, so that's going to give me 45 valor points per day from quests, or 315 per week if I do them every day (which I probably won't).  I'll be getting 270 per week from LFR now with the extra raid coming out, so that leave me needing to do 6-7 heroics per week in order to cap.  Not a big deal.  Toss in a scenario here and there for fun and it's even less.

Plus, that should seriously increase my stock of higher end enchanting mats, which is always a good thing!

I've also started leveling both my druid and my shadow priest, and both are working their way through the Valley of the Four Winds and approaching 87 rapidly.  There is a big part of me that is seriously considering not switching to the Valley upon hitting 86 with the next few characters and just finishing up Jade Forest - one because I haven't done it yet, and two because I'm developing a deep hatred for the giants swarms of annoying vermin near Halfhill and the damn sprites infesting the granary.  That part of that zone is getting really old and I'm not sure it's worth the increase in xp per quest.  So with toon #6, I'll use that approach and we'll see if it makes a difference in my leveling time.

Level 90 #3!

So I finally managed to get the hunter to level 90 just a couple of days ago.  His total played time from 85-90 was 22 hours, which was the fastest time yet, and about 2 hours faster than his 80-85 time in Cata.

I also managed to get to Exalted with Anglers on Joar, which now leaves me just doing Klaaxi, Shado-Pan and August Celestials.

I've started working through both the druid and the shadow priest next.