The Early Levels Breeze By!

So I'm still cranking out my Molten Front dailies on my Horde toons, and still ran a ton of dungeons this past weekend on both my warlock and my druid. I also tried tanking for a bit on my son's fairly well geared Death Knight tank. Yep. Still don't really like tanking. Not sure why I bother even trying every so often. Just a waste of gold and time.

In any case, I've also been working on those alliance toons that I mentioned earlier. The early levels really fly by (duh) so even without heirlooms, I managed to get a ton of levels done last week without dedicating a whole lot of time.

Here is where we stand as of today:

Death Knight - level 65
Druid - level 10
Hunter - level 30
Mage - level 10
Paladin - level 7 (and probably up next!)
Priest - level 10
Rogue - level 13
Shaman - level 10
Warlock - level 13
Warrior - level 12

That's a total of 24 levels since last week. Granted, those are almost all the absolute easiest possible levels, so that's an almost completely meaningless number for a week. But I'll take it anyway.

I'm also very close to having the Molten Front dailies fully complete on a second toon - my Hunter. They're still under way on both the Death Knight, Paladin and Druid. I still need to do enough questing in Hyjal to unlock them on both the Shaman and Shadow Priest, and might just do those two next after I finish those last three. So we'll see. At some point, I'm likely to have had enough of Molten Front dailies and switch to leveling my alliance toons exclusively. We'll have to see.

But today, with maintenance underway, I'm off to play a little RIFT.

Back to Leveling?

So I'm very close to accomplishing most of the goals that I set out for myself after hitting 85 on character #10. At that point, I was mostly looking to finish leveling my remaining professions, work on getting my main to exalted with the guild, finish gearing a few more toons and work on making some gold.

The addition of the Molten Front dailies have added yet more for me to do, so at this point, I'm starting to lose interest in all of it. I could still potentially work on gearing the shammy, warrior and rogue a bit more, but I've gotten to the point that the frustrations of the groups that I get through the dungeon finder tool generally outweigh the time invested.

So I'm debating switching back into the leveling game and moving on from just having 10 characters at max level and try to go for 20 by the time the next expansion hits. The plan is that having done a Horde character of each class, I would then switch and try to do an Alliance character of each class.

I've already started to set this up as you may have noted from my sidebar. So here is where I stand on the Alliance front:

Gnome Death Knight - level 65
Night Elf Hunter - level 30
Worgen Warlock - level 13
Dwarf Warrior - level 12
Gnome Mage - level 8
Dwarf Paladin - level 7
Human Priest - level 7
Draenei Shaman - level 7
Night Elf Druid - level 6
Worgen Rogue - not yet started.

So that's the collection. That's 155 total levels with 850 to go, which would take 695 levels between now and the next expansion. If I generally average a level per day, that's probably not happening, but it might be interesting to try. If I guesstimate the next expansion at 12/15/2012, that's 501 days, so 1.4 levels per day.

You Can Go Crazy With These

For some reason, it seems like Blizzard has done a much better job this time around of promoting some degree of immersion with the new Firelands / Molten Front dailies. As a serious altoholic, this can obviously result in spending huge blocks of time doing nothing but dailies. With 14 dailies quests per day from the Molten Front once you have everything unlocked, across 10 different level 85 alts, that works out to a whole ton of quests.

For those of you doing the math at home, that also works out to a ton of gold. Fortunately, I hadn't progressed far enough in Mt. Hyjal to have unlocked the dailies on all of my toons. At this point, there are two more that I need to quest on in order to unlock it - priest and shaman. I find with a decently geared level 85, it can be done in about an hour or two, so it's not a huge investment in time.

I'm also not progressing at the same pace on all of my toons. My warlock and my hunter are the furthest along with my death knight and paladin not far behind. I just managed to unlock them on the druid yesterday and am off to the races on that toon. Have not really started at all on the mage, rogue or warrior.

I'm also finding more than ever that there are plenty of things for me to do in the game - whether it is working on PvP on my warlock or mage, running heroics, working on dailies, leveling professions or even dipping into a little bit of raiding.

My guild is currently 2/7 in the new Firelands raid and invited me in for a few tries on Rhyolith the other evening. Very interesting encounter. It's a great fight for a destro warlock given the burst that I'm able to unleash on the legs to bring some quick turns. Getting used to "steering" a boss presents a bit of a challenge, but we learned quite a bit on a series of tries. We didn't actually get him down while I was there, but learned enough that the guild was able to get him down a couple of nights later.

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.