50K Honorable Kills

If only it was on one toon.

As someone who is obviously a severe altoholic, I rarely play any one toon with enough intensity and commitment to get those large numerical achievements on any of my toons. So to make up for that, I tend to track their accomplishments as a group.

I just recently passed the 50,000 honorable kill mark across my ten toons, which is something that I'm particularly proud of. I've continued to do a lot of PvP. I managed to get some decent gear for my priest before the patch dropped today, although nowhere close to getting him into full Bloodthirsty.

Here are the numbers as of patch day for each of my characters:

Joar - 22,423
Joarwyn - 8,058
Joardk - 6,273
Joarnak - 4,206
Joaridan - 3,333
Joarvyk - 2,281
Joarshot - 2,040
Joarstab - 1,240
Joarbek - 555
Joarmama - 213

Total - 50,622

Halfway to the 100,000 mark!

PvPapalooza

I've been going back and forth lately between PvP on my warlock and on my mage. I must say, the extreme control that comes with being a frost mage in some ways have me leaning more that direction than towards the warlock. I've just been having a lot more fun with the mage.

I've also been messing around with a variety of my other toons on the PvP front trying to figure out who to gear next. My warlock is in full bloodthirsty and is honor capped for the patch. The mage is also full bloodthirsty and is about a quarter of the way to the cap.

So, I've been debating who to work on next. I've been messing around off and on with the hunter, feral druid, resto druid, warrior, frost death knight. Also been wondering about either enhance or resto shammy or possible disc or shadow priest. Needless to say, nothing is really speaking to me and I can't decide who to focus on gearing next. Normally, with my propensity for ranged, I would say either hunter or shadow priest next. I tried the hunter a bit and it really wasn't speaking to me. Might give the shadow priest a bit of a spin next and see how it goes.

I also had a couple of really fun runs with the new warrior, so even though I tend to be fairly melee averse, I might actually go that way next. This is the extreme downside of being a leveling addict, is once you've got all those toons to 85, it becomes quite perplexing figuring out who to play next. Of course, it always gives you the option to mess around with everyone just a little bit, which is sort of what I've been doing. I even dished up a nice subtlety spec for my rogue, who is normally just my bank alt and played around with him for a few. Also incredibly fun.

Or I Could Do Some PvP...

So I set out a few things in my last post that I wanted to work on next having achieved my goal of a level 85 of each class. So yeah - haven't really done much of that. Instead, I've been spending a lot of time on PvP on both my warlock and my mage. My warlock now has a complete set of Bloodthirsty PvP gear and is really a complete pain in the neck in BG's. (You can just hear the allies going "#$@#$ Fear...somebody kill that @#$#@ warlock....Feared Again! @#$$#@...will somebody get him..")

I've also been working on gearing my frost mage who must be equally frustrating. The main thing with the mage, is unlike my warlock, I don't tend to run any dungeons on the mage, so he doesn't really have a decent weapon. So I've been working on Tol Barad dailies to get the staff from there. Just a day or two away. And then I should be a complete pain.

I did manage to get the Shaman geared enough to run troll dungeons, and I did run a few normals on my fresh 85 warrior - enough to realize that I don't really enjoy running dungeons on the warrior all that much. I think I'm just not much of a melee person at heart really.

I've also been working on finishing leveling both my leatherworking and blacksmithing. It's slow going as I'm too cheap to just buy the mats that I need to finish them up. I did manage to get both of them to 500 though, so just those last 25 points to go.

Then I'll finish up engineering on the rogue, which is sitting at a much less respectable 464.

Joar finally did get to honored with the new guild, which enabled him to finally purchase the fish feast recipe that he's been wanting.

On the PvP front, I'm closing in on the 25,000 HK mark on Joàr. He's sitting at 21,902 right now. I also captured a flag for the first time in WSG the other day and was quite surprised that I'd never done it before. So, first flag capture in the 60th battle per my statistics page.

I'm also approaching the 50,000 HK mark across all my 10 toons - sitting at a total of 46,095 right now. I may also try a little bit of PvP on the rogue, but we'll see.

Ding! Level 85 #10! Mission Accomplished

So I managed to hit 85 on my goblin warrior this morning giving me a level 85 of each class. My total played time to 85 was 3 days, 23 hours, which is just amazing to me given it used to take over 6 days just to get to 80. Heck, 3 days, 23 hours would have been a record setting time to 60 back in the day.

My total time for the Cataclysm stretch was about 20 hours, so not a huge improvement over any of my other toons.

So for now, the immediate objectives are:

• Finish the last 3 professions that I don't already have maxed.
• Work on guild rep on Joar
• Finish gearing the shammy and then switch to focusing on gearing either the priest, warrior or rogue.
• Maybe spend a bit more time focusing on the gold making game.

Closing in on Completion

So it's started to bug me not having this last toon to 85. After all, that has been my stated goal for so long, it seems silly to put it off, so I've been focusing a little bit more on leveling my warrior. He hit 84 last night and now just has the slog through Twilight Highlands to finish hopefully within the next day or two.

I've also been working on gearing my shammy. I've been doing it the old fashion way - initially grinding out regular instances and rep dailies and such until I have enough gear to qualify for heroics - which I just hit.

I could afford to buy a few epics to instantly gear him, but why bother?

So with the shaman now geared for heroics, I now have 3 toons that are raid geared, 7 that are geared for heroics, 1 that is PvP geared (and would qualify for heroics based purely on iLvL) and two that I will still need to gear up - my rogue and my warrior once he finally hits 85. And I may actually work on those. Why not?

I've also done a little bit of raiding on my warlock. My guild is doing pretty well from a progression standpoint and invited me into some raids a week or so ago. Oddly enough, my first Cataclysm raid boss down was Ascendant Council!

On the same weekend, I also managed to get Magmaw, Omnotron, Maloriak and Chimera down but we weren't quite able to get Atramedes down. I was lagging like crazy at that point which didn't work well with the strategy we were using.

All in all, it was a fun time, and nice to go from 0 to 5/12 almost instantly!

So after getting the warrior to 85, I need to finish maxing the rest of my professions - Leatherworking, Blacksmithing and Engineering. I also want to finish getting Joar to exalted with my guild so I can get the stylin' new mounts. Beyond that, it'll just be working on continuing to gear the various toons!

What a Long Strange Trip...Violet Awesomeness!

So after 3 years of trying, I finally managed to get the School of Hard Knocks achievement finished on Joàr, which was the last piece of the meta that I needed. A huge thank you to Scariteri from Sisters of Elune, who let me cap the flag in Eye of the Storm giving me the very last piece that I needed!

So I sat in Org on my new Violet Proto-Drake for about 10 minutes really enjoying it, before switching back to my much more sleek flying carpet and going about my normal business, albeit at a much brisker pace.

I've also now been working on leveling my warrior through the new Cataclysm content - grant very slowly. He just hit level 81, so I'm on my way back to Org to figure out what this Colossus Smash thing is all about.

I also spent a few days working on gearing my hunter for the new ZA/ZG heroics, which took a lot less time than I thought it would. I've also been gearing up my frost mage for PvP and he's now got 3 of the 5 core pieces.

I'm thinking about working on gearing up the shammy next after I finish getting the warrior to 85. I might work on finishing up those last couple of professions a bit as well.

So, that's the update for this week!

Speed to 80

So I managed to hit 80 on my goblin warrior the other day. My total played time to 80 was 3 days, 6 hours. Just slightly more than half the time of my previous best. Really amazing how much they've improved the leveling speed. Obviously guild xp bonuses and two more pieces of BoA gear also make a substantial difference.

So now I shed 3 pieces of BoA and continue on through the Cataclysm content. I'm curious to see if I come in significantly better than my previous record which was around 22 hours played from 80-85.

Pugging ZA/ZG

So I spent a ridiculous amount of time this weekend running the new Zul'Gurub and Zul'Aman instances. It was generally just myself and my son and for a couple of them we had one other guild member joining us, but the rest of the group was generally pugged.

I also did pugs of both instances at least once all by myself. With a couple of exceptions, I was really surprised by how smoothly things went almost every time.

The first clear that I did of ZA on Tuesday night was a complete pug, and we wiped numerous times while we all worked on figuring out the mechanics, but everyone stuck with it for the entire time until we finally managed to get that last boss down.

It restored my faith in the LFD tool a bit to have a really good PUG group that communicated well, talked things through, was patient and just generally did a great job.

All told, I'm enjoying the two new instances a lot. I haven't tried running them on my paladin yet as I'm not entirely sure he's quite well geared enough for them. He is over the minimum iLvL by about 5 points, but I did a few runs with my son on his holy pally, and he's raid geared and was still struggling with mana. So I'm a bit hesitant.

I'm also considering focusing a bit more on gearing up my hunter. I purchased a few crafted epics for him and am keeping my eye out for a better weapon on the AH. I'm hoping within the next week or so to get him geared enough to start running the new instances on him as well. He's currently sitting about 3 or 4 points short and I'm not one to try to cheat it by putting a cheap tanking cloak or something in my bags.

I've also continued to level the warrior who is at level 79 and about 4 bars from hitting 80 and heading to the Cataclysm zones. Tons of fun on the warrior.

Finally, I've also been working on the School of Hard Knocks achievement on my warlock. It's the one last one that I need for the meta. I managed to get 3 of the 4 battlegrounds knocked out yesterday and am going to work on the last one - Eye of the Storm - until I get it.

My son has agreed to come along on his holy pally to pocket heal for me to help me get there!

So, all in all, a lot to do in game and I'm enjoying all of it.

Rambling On

So, my goal of having a toon of each class to level 85 before the next expansion seems to be very much attainable at this point. With 9 toons already there and my 10th toon at level 76, I have 9 levels to go. If the next expansion is coming in somewhere around 18 months from now, that means I need to knock out a level every 2 months.

I think I can handle that.

So, given the complete lack of pressure there, I've been spending more time working on some of m other toons. Mostly running dailies for rep and running the daily heroic - both on my warlock and on my paladin. Both are currently geared well enough that running heroics on either of them is a breeze. They are also both geared enough that they'll be able to get into the new/old troll instances later today after maintenance is done!

So, now I'm debating which toon to work on gearing next. I'm debating between priest, hunter and death knight. The hunter and priest are actually both already geared enough for heroics. It's really just a matter of finishing the various rep grinds and getting them both to the point where they have all the JP gear they need.

I may give the priest a try as a holy 5 man healer. My complete inability to get the hang of the druid does make me want to try one of the other healing classes. I've never really done anything with the priest, so that intrigues me a bit.

I've also somewhat debated putting the shammy in that group and trying to gear him up as enhancement. I've never been a big fan of melee, but I definitely enjoyed the shammy while leveling, so I'm tempted to give it a try.

At the end of the day, I may give tanking a bit of a try on the death knight, and after I've tortured myself sufficiently, switch back over to the priest.

Most of the heroics that I've done recently through the dungeon finder have been pretty smooth - mostly due to the fact that people now understand the instances pretty well and also are finally at the point where they outgear them. You still get the occasional wipe, but it is no where near as bad as it was.

The speed leveling warrior is sitting in Zul'Drak and is pretty close to hitting 77, so I may be running a bit ahead of my "once every two months" schedule.

Breezing Through Northrend

In between running dailies and heroics on my paladin and my warlock, I'm still occasionally working on leveling my warrior. He is breezing through Northrend with ease. I'm working him through Grizzly Hills at the moment, where he just recently hit 75. Northrend really does seem to go quite a bit faster with the bonus to leveling speed as well as a couple of additional pieces of BoA.

I'm also about a day or two away from hitting exalted with Dragonmaw on my paladin which will hook him up with a nice new epic necklace for his healing set and a nice new set of boots for his ret / questing set. He's also pretty close to exalted with Hellscream, but he's going to need quite a few more commendations in order to get his epic trinket. I'm not in a huge rush on that, as he's got two good jewelcrafter trinkets equipped right now that seem to do the trick nicely. After that, I just need to finish getting to exalted with Ramkahen for some stylin new boots and then it'll just be working on the daily each day.

On the warlock, he's basically just in the daily heroic for valor points mode. I'm just a couple of days away from getting the T11 chest, and after that will be working towards the cloak and a ring.

Beyond that, I'm starting to think about which toon to gear next - still debating between the hunter and the shadow priest. The druid for some reason still runs hot and cold for me in terms of whether I find it completely irritating running heroics on him. Not sure why. I may have just gotten spoiled with the paladin having the huge heals to keep the tank up, that having slightly better AoE just doesn't seem to compensate much.

Northrend Ho

First off, sorry about the lack of posts in a while. Things have been extremely busy at work. I've resumed focus on gearing up my warlock and my paladin. The return to prominence of my druid was extremely short lived. Despite all the AoE, the lack of a truly monster heal just made me miss my paladin too much. And now that all the dps are learning what stuff they shouldn't be standing in, there seem to be relatively few encounters where I really need a huge AoE heal.

I've also been working a little bit on the warrior - he's sitting at 68 and just made his way to Northrend. Given the improved leveling speed in Northrend that I've heard about, I've decided to skip Borean Tundra and just start in Howling Fjord and then go straight to Dragonblight. Hopefully that will work well enough. I'm at just slightly over 2 days played time at this point.

Arms continues to be a complete beast for leveling, and I'm really looking forward to picking up Bladestorm in another level or two to have yet another way to mow down everything around me.