Deathwing Down on Toons #7, 8 and 9!

So this past weekend was an extremely productive one for Raid Finder for me and I managed to get Deathwing Down on my rogue, priest and shaman, making it characters 7, 8 and 9. It'll be about two more weeks before I can really dedicate a lot of time to raid finder again, so I've got two weeks to get the last member of the Joar family - my goblin warrior, Joarmama - geared for LFR.

I've started off by having my blacksmith make him a 365 weapon and also PvP shoulders, belt and boots, because those are the areas where he had the lowest iLvl. Those four items managed to get him geared enough to start running the new Hour of Twilight dungeons, so now's it is really just a matter of running those enough to get him to 372.

After one End Time run, he managed to get the head piece off of Muruzond already (who my poor Death Knight never did get!), and quest gloves and a quest ranged item. Those have already boosted his average iLvL to 366, so I'm hopeful that those last 6 points will be pretty doable over the next 2 weeks.

I also managed to get the last piece of T13 on my Death Knight, so he's now happily sporting a 4 pc set bonus. It's the first time that I've ever had that on any toon on the current tier, so I'm pretty happy about that. It's not the shoulders that I wanted, so I'll still be trying for those so I can go back to the valor headpiece, but it's a nice thing to have.

I've also been working on finishing leveling professions on the goblin warrior and he's into Cata zones on both his mining and skinning. Gives me something to do while I wait for my queue's to pop!

Strategies for LFR Gearing

So now I'm on to the harder toons to gear for LFR. My priest isn't quite there, but he's close enough that just a few drops, or a enough runs to buy some valor or jp gear should push him over the edge. The shaman and the warrior are going to be quite a bit harder though.

For the enhancement shaman, purchasing a set of 378 bracers for him was actually enough to get him to the point that he could run the new Hour of Twilight 5 mans. From there, it's a matter of putting together a list of the drops that I need, and also what my biggest upgrades are from Justice Points.

Interestingly enough, the shaman needs the same two weapons that I can't seem to get to drop on my rogue - either the Trickster's Edge off of Perotharn, or the Clattering Claw off of Benedictus.

Beyond that, the upgrades that I'm working towards from the Hour of Twilight 5 mans are:

Helm - Dawnslayer Helm - Asira Dawnslayer
Shoulders - Betrayer's Pauldrons - Benedictus
Feet - Dead End Boots - can drop off of any of the Echo's in End Time
Waist - Cinch of the World Shaman - actually a quest reward from Hour of Twilight
Ring - Mannoroth's Signet - Mannoroth
Trinket - Arrow of Time - Muruzond

For legs, I went with the justice point variety and grabbed a set of Erupting Volcanic Leggings for 2200 JP's. I think my next justice point upgrade may actually be my relic since I'm still using a 346 Sandshift Relic there. If I don't get Arrow of Time to drop off of Muruzond, I may also use JP's to pick up Fluid Death.

For Valor Points, I'm thinking my first upgrade might actually be the Kiroptyric Sigil, especially given that there are decent drops available in every other slot, and an extra 2200 agility on a 90 second cooldown is just too good to pass up. After that, it will likely be waist, unless I can't get the helm to drop, in which case I might grab the valor helm.

For my shadow priest, his next big upgrade is going to be his chest piece - where I either need the Whisperwind Cloak off of the Echo of Tyrande in End Time, or I'll take the Firelands Tier piece for justice points. Other Hour of Twilight upgrades still to go on the priest include the Horned Band off of Perotharn and the Slippers of Wizardry off of Aszhara.

Happy New Year!

I've managed to get two more toons fully geared for the Raid Finder and have gotten Deathwing down on one of them - the paladin. The rogue has done the Siege of Wrymrest portion of the raid, but not that last half. I should be able to knock that out in the next few days.

I've also started working on gearing the priest a little bit, so he's up to a 370 ilvl already, so will quite clearly be the next one to run through - hopefully by next weekend. And that after that, it'll be the final two - shaman and warrior - which will both without a doubt be my most difficult two to get fully geared.

I've also continued to run Raid Finder regularly on the warlock, death knight and druid, but have gotten no interesting drops the last few weeks. At least it's valor points.

Deathwing Down on Toon #5

So I managed to kill the LFR version of Deathwing on my fifth character yesterday, Joarnak, my mage. So that now makes for warlock, death knight, druid, hunter and now mage. I'm working on gearing the rogue for it next, and the paladin won't be far behind, priest likely after that. I've never really healed on the priest, so I'm thinking of giving it a try as either holy or disc. We'll see how that goes.

So the above toons are all obviously over 372 ilvl at this point, since they've been through the raid finder at this point, but here is where everyone else stands:

Joarstab (rogue) 371
Joaridan (pally) 364
Joarvyk (priest) 364
Joarbek (shaman) 348 (say he has 357 in his bags, so I may have gotten something that I just haven't equipped yet)
Joarmama (warrior) 349 (wouldn't have guessed in a million years that he was slightly better equipped than the shaman).

I need to make a new weapon for the warrior in the worst possible way since he's still sporting the Axe of Earthly Sundering from Deepholm. But I should be able to craft him up something nice, which should make a huge difference. A nice set of JP bracers should make a huge difference for the shaman. Neither of those are geared enough for the hour of twilight heroics yet, so the key is going to be acquiring or crafting enough stuff for both to push them over the edge for those, then just keep running those until enough drops that they can do LFR. Shouldn't be too bad.

While the rogue is at 371, there's really a ton of PvP gear going into that calculation, so I really won't be looking to jump into LFR until I've replaced a lot more of the PvP gear. I don't want to be "That Guy". Although heck, combat is so good these days, I'm already just about outdpsing my 381 ilvl warlock.

New Goals for LFR

So this past weekend, I was able to do full runs of LFR and kill Deathwing on 4 different toons. While I had a few groups that were a bit of a struggle, on a general basis, most of the groups were pretty decent.

On top of these 4 toons, I've got two more toons that are close to being geared enough to run LFR. Given that I've never before killed an end-boss during the actual patch for that boss, I've really enjoyed the LFR process.

One goal that I'm thinking about setting for myself is to kill Deathwing on all 10 of my level 85's before the expansion hits. This would be the most challenging on the warrior, who's gear is pretty bad at this point, but can be quickly supplemented with BoE JP gear from other toons, at least to get him to the point where he can start running the new Hour of Twilight instances.

I'd also like to switch the shaman from enhance to elemental given the gear drops that I've seen, but not sure how easy that would be to do.

Initial Thoughts on New 5 Mans and LFR

So over the course of this weekend, I managed to complete all three of the new 5 man dungeons on 5 of my different characters as well as getting valor capped on all five of those characters. That just boggles my mind. Given that I'm not a serious raider, I very rarely get valor capped on any character, much less 5 in one week. Gearing this patch is going to be much easier than it has been.

I was also lucky with some 5 man drops on 2 of those 5 toons and managed to get their iLvL up enough to run the Raid Finder version of Dragon Soul. I found the raid to be very enjoyable on both toons. In both cases, we wiped a couple of times, but managed to finish all four of the new bosses in under two hours. For me, that's perfect.

I didn't manage to get any gear at all on the warlock, but on the death knight, I got two pieces of tier gear. Imagine my excitement at that! During the last patch, it took me the entire patch cycle to accumulate two pieces of tier gear, so to get that within the first few days really felt great.

So needless to say, I'm enjoying the new raid finder. The Darkmoon Faire has been interesting, but not enough to distract my attention from the new dungeons. I enjoy the new profession quests and those have been good for my engineer, who still isn't quite done. But beyond that, I think I'm just beyond caring about new pets or mounts.

The Feisty Return of Destro

So I've been playing my lock as demo for the last few weeks, mostly for the fun of popping Meta on trash packs and Immo Aura and Hellfiring everything in site to death. It's just big happy demon fun. As someone who has played destro since the end of BC, it's been very frustrating how poorly it has performed in 4.2.

So I'm very anxious to see how things go today with the buffs to destro in 4.3. All news from the PTR so far has been positive, so my imp will be returning to the light of day, and Joar will be roaming back on the path of fiery death.

Immediate plans are to work through the new 5-mans on 4 or 5 different toons and try to prep for doing some serious LFR work this weekend. We'll see how that goes!

My alchemists are all prepped with a nice supply of mats for epic gem transmutes as well, so hopefully it'll be a profitable first few days of the patch.

Bye Theramore! Your Quests Sucked Anyway

So the debate that has been going on about the constant abuse the Alliance has been taking at the hands of the Horde has been pretty interesting for me given that I'm leveling my first Alliance character from 1-60. He's almost there, having hit 53 yesterday. If I didn't have so many other things I was messing with, including gearing my Horde toons, making gold on my Horde toons and leveling my Rift mage, I'd probably have 3 or 4 Alliance toons to 60 by now. But as it is, I'm lumbering along with just this one.

I've been leveling this toon through Kalimdor rather than Eastern Kingdoms. He's a Night Elf, so it was just easier to stay where I was. I've really been enjoying all the redone zones - there are some great stories being told. The one exception to that was Dustwallow. The quests through there were the same ones that I remember running 10 different times on my Horde toons. So not only have they not been updated, but they're not even different for Alliance. Sure there were a few available in Theramore itself, but they weren't particularly interesting.

So sure. Nuke the place. Leave all of Dustwallow in flames. Re do it like you did the other zones to make it more interesting. I'm willing to start an Alliance insurgency based in a corner of Dustwallow, plotting a counterattack against the Horde. Remember Theramore!

120 Loot Filled Pumpkins

And no freaking mount. I had a break of a few days over the course of Hallows End where I didn't have Internet access and wasn't able to play, but the end result at the end of the holiday was I picked up 120 Loot Filled Pumpkins across my 10 level 85 characters and didn't manage to get the Headless Horseman's mount. I have countless Hallowed Helms and Sinister Squashlings and a few swords, but not a single mount. The frustrations of RNG.

I also finally managed to finish leveling the professions on my priest and so now have a second transmute spec alchemist that will be available for epic gem transmutes come Patch 4.3. They're both stocked up with a decent supply of what I suspect are going to be the mats for the transmutes.

I've also been working on leveling my alliance hunter and have been able to get him to level 45. This is my first time leveling through Thousand Needles post-Cataclysm and I must say I've really enjoyed what they've done with the zone. The fact that the quest progression in Dustwallow Marsh had not really changed at all was a bit disappointing, but Thousand Needles has more than made up for that. My plan is to get this character to 60 and then park him in Outland waiting for the Outland / Northrend leveling nerf that is supposed to hit with the next patch.

Assuming I'll be able to get him those last 15 or so levels before the patch hits, I'm debating which toon to work on next. I'm pretty sure I want it to be someone on the Eastern Kingdoms side of things, so I'm sort of leaning toward the gnome mage, but I might consider the paladin as well.

Mists of Pandaria - Impact on Leveling

I've gone back to leveling my alliance toons a bit.  I keep thinking I'd like to get at least one, if not more of my alliance characters to 85, especially given the emphasis that the new expansion seems to be placing on the conflict between Alliance and Horde, I'm really hoping for some difference in content through MoP for the two factions - certainly more than we saw in Cataclysm where it was mostly limited to a few quests in Twilight Highlands.

I've put leveling the Death Knight on hold until 4.3 rolls around to take advantage of the reduced leveling time through Northrend.  So in the meantime, I'll try to get as many of my alliance toons to Outland as I can.  It may not be more than one, but we'll see.

As a casual player, I was very interested to see what would be out there for me in the new expansion.  I certainly like the idea of a new race and class to play, although I'm hoping Blizzard follows through with the idea of opening up more slots on any given server so I can continue to have one of each class on a particular server.

I think the new talent system will actually make leveling a little bit easier since it will reduce the points at which a decision needs to be made during the process.  It seemed like at each phase, the decision you will be facing will be more impacted by your personal style and how you'd like to level rather than the need to pick any particular talent at each stage in order to be able to level effectively.

No longer having to train for spells will also be a huge time saver.  Right now, in the quest path from 1-60 especially, there really aren't any points where you need to return to a major city anymore, so I can often end up going quite a while without picking up a new spell.  Eliminating that will help a great deal.  The only downside to this approach that I could see is if you're trying to level a profession at the same time, you'll have to return anyway.  Scattering profession trainers throughout the world would help a lot with that.

I think the simplification of the weapons slots for various classes will also make the decision making on gear while leveling much more straightforward.  Hopefully, Blizzard is able to take the time to tweak the quest rewards while leveling a bit to make sure there are enough wands and ranged weapons available for the classes that will now need those more.

Finally, the elimination of minimum range for hunters will make a class that already levels quickly even more formidable.  Combine that with the ability to designate any pet as tenacity, ferocity or cunning, and you should be able to grab any pet you want and make it do what you need.

Add On for Death Knight DPS

For those of you that like to DPS on your Death Knights, I just recently discovered a nice little add on that has helped a lot with my rotation, particularly on boss fights, and has had a pretty noticeable increase on my DPS. The add on is called CLC DK and is available on Curse.com and Wowinterface.

It functions very much like Shock and Awe, and addon that has been used by enhance shammies for quite a while. It basically suggests the spell to use next based on priority rankings right in front of you on your screen. It also provides a better graphical tracking of your runes and can help track various cooldowns including Pillar of Frost.

If you haven't used it, I'd urge you to give it a try. The only downsides is it seems focused particularly on single target, so it's not necessarily prompting you to hit pestilence to spread your diseases. I also haven't figured out a way to get it to incorporate Blood Tap or Empower Rune Weapon in its suggestions, but I'm thinking I might just be missing that at this point.