Driving a Few Alliance Toons to 85

So I can only do so much PvP before I start to get tired of it, and with the dungeon / LFR side of the game not really holding my attention either at this point, I've returned to my great love of leveling alts. I'm going to work on pushing a few of my alliance toons to 85 before MoP hits so we'll see how that goes.

The Death Knight is getting pretty close at this point. I've managed to get him to 82 and so he's starting to work his way through Deepholm. I've been doing some PvP while leveling, just because there's really no difference in the content for Alliance once you get past Grizzly Hills in Northrend - at least up until Twilight Highlands. So I'm adding some battleground love just to keep it interesting.

Once the Death Knight is done, I'll likely turn my attention to the hunter next who is sitting at level 60 and just entered Outland. I'm not sure who it will be after that, although I'm leaning towards someone that starts on the Eastern Kingdoms side since I already ran the alliance side of Kalimdor on the hunter.

It was a really strong weekend from a PvP standpoint, managing to rack up 3,000 HK's over the weekend. It's got my total on the Horde side sitting at 64,955.

Eew. Alliance. Weird.

So I did a faction change and server change on my Shadow Priest last week to move him over to Alliance to get a look at what PvP is like from the Alliance point of view. I'd been reading on the forums and hearing frustration in trade chat the Horde wasn't winning any Battlegrounds any more. I'd done some very rough calculations myself over about a two week period of time, and my winning percentage did seem to be running below 50% (although it tended to go in streaks at different times of the day).

So I thought switching to Alliance would be a nice change of pace. Besides, if things were really bad over on the Horde side, it must be non-stop joy, terrific communication and coordination and reveling in the dominance on the Alliance side, right?

So I log on to my new Human Shadow Priest and find myself in the middle of the Trade District in Stormwind. Oh Shit! Run! Hide! Oh wait.

So there are a few things that I notice right off the bat. First, that I don't know where anything is. And why are there no guards in the Trade District. Why are there guards everywhere when I'm trying to stealth in on a Horde toon, but there's not a damn guard to be found when I need directions.

So, after spending a few minutes trying to find the Hall of Legends (no, Champions...) and the various portals, and my trainer, and the reforger, I'm ready to go. On a side note, you Alliance guys probably would have been better off if Deathwing had actually leveled the place. Nothing is conveniently located, especially compared to Orgrimmar. Just saying.

I then queue for my first battleground and immediately zone into the Alliance area of Warsong Gulch. Sweet! Grab the flag and run! Oh wait. Nevermind.

So I start to wonder if there's some truth to the rumors as I win my first three battlegrounds in a row - Warsong Gulch, Isle of Conquest (yep - Horde still doesn't kill the glaives if you're playing Alliance) and Arathi Basin (woo hoo! zerg Lumber Mill!)

Then, the tide starts to turn, and my groups get rocked in Gilneas and a nasty 4 cap loss in Eye of the Storm. The another nasty Eye of the Storm loss.

So after several days of playing on the Alliance side and the Horde side, I've come to another surprising and secret conclusion. There is a mysterious third faction at play in these battlegrounds that is actually winning the majority of the battlegrounds out there!

So with that little experiment ended, I got a little tired of the PvP, so went back to leveling my actual Alliance toons. I've now managed to get my Gnome Death Knight to 77 and will be leaving Zul'Drak for Sholazar soon.

Casual Gold Making

So I've still mostly been focused on PvP for the last week or so, and almost exclusively on my warlock. He's up to 26,217 HK's, which brings my total across all ten of my toons to 61,646.

When I haven't been queueing for battlegrounds, I've mostly been spending a little bit of time focused on gold making. For me, at least so far in Cataclysm, my biggest money makers have been enchanting and jewelcrafting. I'll start my day scanning the Auction House and using TradeSkillMaster to figure out which scrolls are selling profitably. I'll then craft any that I don't already have posted, focusing primarily on those that are used on 300 level gear and better as I find those sell more dependably.

I then hop over to my Jewelcrafter and use the spreadsheet from Consortium.net to do the Ore shuffle for the day, which usually involves buying a bunch of stacks of various ore, prospecting it all, cutting rare gems, making jewelry with the uncommon or transmuting or selling some of them depending on prices. The jewelry then goes back to my warlock for disenchanting, which feeds his scroll making business.

I've also got two transmute spec'd alchemists, so every day on both of them, I'll do a quick living elements transmute. It's usually good for around 150-200g profit per day each for just a couple of minutes of work.

It's not a huge enterprise and it's never going to get me gold capped, but it keeps me at a very comfortable level of gold.

I might do a bit of PvP on the rogue as well as those seem to be wrecking things on the battlegrounds at this point.

Back to PvP

So the downside of accomplishing most of your goals far in advance of a patch is it tends to make you run out of things to do. So I'm back to PvP! I did a few battlegrounds yesterday on my warlock for the first time since 4.3 dropped in September.

I still need to do that one last Dragon Soul run on my warrior, but it's probably a couple weeks away before I really have time to get that done. He's at least geared for it now, so it shouldn't be too much trouble once I actually focus on it.

I'd capped my honor on the warlock before the end of the last season, so he was able to get a couple of pieces of the new season's gear right away.

We'll see how long it takes before I get totally frustrated with battlegrounds again.

Some SWTOR leveling thoughts

I've finally managed to tweak things to the point that SWTOR is now playable on my laptop, which opens up a lot more time for me to work on leveling while traveling. I've got very mixed feelings about the game after my initial attempts and starting and leveling new toons. Right now, I've leveled an Imperial Agent and a Republic Trooper out of the starting area and have gotten pretty far on a Sith Warrior and Sith Inquisitor as well.

I still don't have any particular character that I'm feeling very attached to unfortunately. I find myself finishing up the early stages on these characters and feeling more depressed or sad than energized to keep going. Unlike some of the other MMO's that I've played, SWTOR really brings home the feeling that you're just a minor cog and that there are things going on that you're not even aware of that may completely screw with your gameplay sometime down the road.

I haven't gotten any distance on a single character without feeling bad either about something I had done, or feeling like I had somehow been betrayed. While I've enjoyed the game itself, it has really left me not feeling particularly motivated about continuing.

The feeling of being caught up in politics is also one that has turned me off a bit. It's bad enough that I've got to be immersed in political bullshit in real life, I don't need Democrats versus Republicans translated into Republic versus Empire when I'm trying to play a game.

So, I'm going to keep trying and see if I find a character that seems to click. The ones that I haven't tried at all yet are Smuggler, Bounty Hunter and Jedi Knight. I'm thinking Smuggler and Bounty Hunter might at least eliminate the feeling of being caught up in a larger machine, since those folks tend to operate on their own anyway. Jedi Knight has potential too in that I really liked the way my class operated as a Sith Warrior - just wasn't a huge fan of the story line. I started a Jedi Consular but very quickly decided I wasn't that big on a character who attacked by throwing dirt at people. Felt a little bit like playing my 3 year old.

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.