To Continue or Not?

So the more I mess around on the beta, the more I think it might be more fun to put the Alliance army on hold until after 5.0 drops.  It seems like leveling, particularly for a class like warlock, could be a lot more enjoyable once the changes to basic talents and mechanics are in place for MoP.  So I may switch my one toon at a time approach for now and just focus on getting the hunter through those last nine levels.

At this point, the alliance army has managed to gain at total of 38 levels so far at this point in July, so things are moving along really nicely.  Switching from dungeon finder to questing has made a big difference as well as I seem to be able to get three levels out of a full set of rested xp instead of just the two that I was getting from dungeon finder - the difference being the xp from the quest turn ins.

I'm still not sure that the quested approach is actually faster, although it seems to still be moving at a decent pace for the levels gains.  Unfortunately, xp per hour tends to fluctuate way too much at lower levels to be able to get a decent read on what the true differences are.

5th Character with 5,000 HK's

So I hit an interesting milestone yesterday.  My shadow priest got the achievement for 5,000 honorable kills.  Looking back, that's actually my 5th level 85 character to hit that amount.  While that's not a ton compared to a lot of the folks out there that rack up enormous numbers of honorable kills, I'm still pretty proud of what that represents.

My warlock is of course, pretty far out in front of the rest of the pack, sitting at over 28,000 honorable kills, which is still not a particularly enormous number.  Across all 10 of my level 85's, I'm currently sitting at a total of 66,498, which is a little bit more impressive.

I may work a little bit on my rogue next who is the next closes to the 5K mark, at 4,216.  Interestingly enough, both my warrior and my shaman are both under 1,000, and I wouldn't mind getting them both into 4 digit territory before MoP drops.

My shadow priest has two pieces of gear left to go before he's in full Ruthless (accompanying my warlock in that regard), so will likely finish that out before I focus on any other toons.

Here's the exact numbers as of yesterday:

Warlock - 28,005
Druid - 8,247
Mage - 6,624
Death Knight - 6,332
Priest - 5,021
Rogue - 4,216
Paladin - 3,818
Hunter - 2,855
Shaman - 799
Warrior - 581

Total:  66,498

The Alliance Army Advances

So I have continued to steady advance of my army of 9 alliance toons that I'm attempting to level simultaneously.  I've also been messing around with making gold on my existing Horde contingent with pretty good success, and I've also been dabbling a bit in PvP on my priest, running a few LFR's on various toons, and working on finishing up Loremaster of Cataclysm on Joar.  I've only got about 20 quests to go in Uldum before that is done.

From a gold making standpoint, I've mostly been doing the Elementium Shuffle and  using that to keep a nice stock of gems and scrolls up on the auction house.  I've also gotten back into dabbling in glyphs a little bit, but have only a fairly small stock posted at any one point, because it tends to be a pretty active and competitive market on my server, so I'm not really interested in investing in a huge stock that I might not make a return on.

I've managed to get Joar about half way to 88 on the beta and am continuing to really enjoy the new dynamics of the demonology spec.  I've tried destro a little bit, but at least for leveling, it hasn't been quite as fun.  I've also completed both the Stormsnout Brewery and Jade Serpent instances and enjoyed both a great deal.  Interesting mechanics, but nothing that was too troubling for any of my groups.

On my army of alliance toons, I'm continuing to make really good progress.  I've found the low level dungeons to be a significant drain on leveling speed though, so I'm going to return to a primarily quested approach with a few dungeons thrown in for variety.  For the most part, the characters that I was leveling via dungeon finder are now 3-4 levels behind the toons that were mostly questing.  The exception to this would be the two classes that I was leveling as tanks that have significantly benefited from instant queue times and are keeping pace pretty nicely with the questing characters.

So here is the update:
Hunter - 76
Druid - 29
Shaman - 26
Priest - 26
Paladin - 29
Warrior - 25
Mage - 26
Warlock - 30
Rogue - 28

The other aspect to leveling via dungeon finder that wasn't working particularly well is it is almost impossible to simultaneously level professions that way as there just aren't enough nodes in any of the instances.  So I'll keep at it.  At the point that patch 5.0 drops, I'll likely switch to just focusing on one at a time, but in the meantime, the slow and steady advance of the large group has been pretty interesting.

June Leveling Update

So despite a week out of the country for vacation and several days with no game access for other reasons, June ended up being a pretty strong leveling update for the alliance army.

I managed to gain a total of 53 levels during the month of June and have made very strong progress in Northrend with my hunter.  I've also continued to level the druid, paladin, priest and shaman primarily through the dungeon finder.  I'm still not convinced that that is resulting in faster leveling, especially given the problems that are often encountered with dungeon finder groups.

I've also been getting back into PvP.  My alliance priest has been the main beneficiary of that resurgent interested.  I've found that the alliance dominance in PvP seems to have fallen off a bit of late, especially in my battlegroup.  I've had a much better win-loss ratio on my Horde characters over the last couple of weeks than on my alliance characters by a signfiicant margin, even though those characters aren't even close to as well geared as my shadow priest.

On the upside, it's added about 1,000 honorable kills to my total, bringing me up to almost 66,000 across all of my various Garrosh toons.

Resuming After Vacation

My alliance army continues to move forward, with a large number of my characters breaking through into the high 20's and heading for that magical land of dual talent spec.  I continue to work on leveling the druid, paladin, shaman and priest through the dungeon finder primarily, which is working quite well at this point.

I'll be switching back to working on the hunter today after maintenance is complete.  My hunter is currently working his way through Howling Fjord, which has been fun since I've never done that zone on alliance before.

With no release date in MoP yet announced, I'm going to continue to work on each of these characters a little bit at a time, and then once a release date is announced, I'll probably switch and power the hunter to 85 so he's available for MoP upon release.

We still have a couple of days to go until the end of the month, but it looks like I'll finish up with around 60 levels for the month, which I'm pretty happy with given that my play time was pretty severely restricted for about half the month due to vacation and other issued.  If I can hit that same number or better in July, I'll be very happy with where these guys stand.

More Low Level Dungeon Advice, and Summer Vacation inc

So it's been another solid week for the advancement of my new alliance army.  I've continued to run a lot of random low level dungeons on my shaman, priest, bear and paladin, which of course is always fodder for great stories.

Here are where things stand as of today:

Hunter - 69
Druid - 21
Mage - 22
Paladin - 25
Priest - 22
Rogue - 22
Shaman - 20
Warlock - 25
Warrior - 20

So everyone is now fully mounted and running about much faster.  That's just a touch under 30 levels in about 10 days, so not bad.  Too bad that's going to slow down enormously as these guys get further along.  At some point, once it become more clear when MoP is going to release, I may start focusing on the hunter just to get him to 85 before release, but that's still feeling like September sometime, so I've got plenty of time.

It was an interesting weekend in the ole low level dungeon finder.  Not as many really good groups as I'd experienced previously, but that's always good fodder for more tidbits of wisdom for use in the low level dungeons.  So here are the latest pearls of wisdom:

• If you're a rogue, and you're not dual wielding, re-roll a paladin or warrior.  Rogues with only one weapon are not the latest thing.
• Zoned into an instance as a healer.  Three DPS - a druid in bear form, a hunter with his bear out and on auto-growl/thunderstomp and a warlock with his voidwalker out.   This braintrust was then incredibly surprised when the tank finally gave up and left.
• Apparently, if you keep running in and out of the instance like a moron, it makes you basically impossible to vote kick.  
• It's not good dungeon etiquette to roll need on everything, including stuff you can't use.  After the group has said something to you once, don't be surprised if you get vote kicked if you continue to do it.
• If the healer is dead, it's probably not the best time to pull the next group.  Especially if you're a bear tank wearing mostly intellect cloth.  As it turns out, it's not making you smarter.

So that's it for this week's installment.  I'm taking the family on vacation for the next week or so, so it'll be quiet from me for a bit..  But that's the joy of summer, right!

In the meantime, keep alt'ing along!

More Low Level Dungeon Lessons

Well - team Alliance marches on.  After ending my brief fling with SWTOR and deciding to refocus on WoW leveling, I've really been able to make excellent progress on my remaining 9 alliance characters.  The end results for May were a total of 60 levels in just about 2 weeks.

Here is where we stand as of today:

Hunter - level 66
Druid - 18
Mage - 19
Paladin - 22
Priest - 19
Rogue - 22
Shaman - 16
Warlock - 23
Warrior - 18

I've also been leveling the druid, shaman, priest, paladin and warrior primarily through dungeon finder, which has been an interesting process so far.  I must say, the addition of quest givers in all of the instances has greatly increased the viability of leveling through the instances and the speed at which that happens.

Fortunately, I started this process on my two healers first.  It's been a long time since I was in a low level dungeon, so I was very pleasantly surprised to discover that mana isn't nearly the issue that it used to be for low level dungeon healers.  In fact, as long as the group had a semi-competent tank and the dps weren't too ridiculously trigger happy, I could pretty comfortably heal through anything.  Power Word: Shield and Renew, Earth Shield and Healing Wave.  All worked fine at keeping the tanks up and topping off any dps that decided to pull someone they shouldn't.

The experience tanking hasn't been quite as positive.  Having healed a fair amount at end game and more heroics than I probably want to think about has probably given me quite a bit of an edge in terms of healing low level dungeons, but I've been pretty surprised by some of the other groups that I've encountered as a tank.  Let me preface the below sarcastic onslaught by saying that the majority of my experiences tanking low level instances have still be pretty positive and I've had some very good groups. 

So, more lessons for low level dungeoneering:

• Warlocks - if you're running an instance with your voidwalker out, you're doing it wrong.  Please re-roll a mage.
• If you queued as a healer, strangely enough, your primary responsibility should be to heal.  And the primary focus of your healing should usually be the tank.  If you are wandering around searching for Serpentbloom, you are doing it wrong.  If you are three bosses in, and haven't cast a single healing spell, see above.
• Even if priests are allowed to need on strength mail, doesn't mean you should be doing it.
• Hunters - just because you're bows can shoot really far - doesn't mean you should constantly be trying to shoot whatever is farthest away.  Try shooting in the direction of whatever group the tank is currently pulling.  You'll find that mobs don't come and eat your face quite as often.
• Intellect cloth does not make you a smarter tank.

That's it for now.  I'll be spending a lot more time in low level instances this coming weekend, which I'm sure will generate another wealth of valuable tips and tricks.

Good progress

This past week, I've continued to make great progress on leveling my various alliance characters.  I've managed to push my hunter all the way to level 66, just questing in Hellfire and Zangarmash.  I'm likely going to delay taking him to Northrend until level 70, not because that's necessarily more efficient, but because I'm extremely tired of questing in Northrend.

My lower level toons are all working their way nicely through their respective starting areas and I've had a few that have hit 20 and gotten their mounts.

I'm debating switching to dungeon leveling for a number of my toons including bear druid, paladin, priest and shaman.  I never really did dedicated dungeon leveling on any of my characters, so I'm curious to see how it goes for long periods of time.  Plus, I'm interested in trying low level tanking and healing on a variety of different characters.  I'm going to wait till level 18 to start on my bear druid so that he has swipe before I try.  The others, I might just jump right in.  Of course, the druid is sitting at 17 right now, so we're not talking about a lengthy wait.

How They Breeze By

Ah the low levels are fun.  They just sort of breeze by.  A total of 18 levels in 6 days.  And I wasn't playing all that much for most of that time.  If only all the levels went so quickly.

I've been making really good progress through the lower levels on most of my alliance characters.  I've also figured out an easy way to keep track of all of their professions and have just lined them up exactly with all of my Horde characters, making it extremely simple to keep track of who has which profession.

I'm going to switch back to some of the slightly more challenging fare though and work on pushing my Hunter further through Outlands.  We'll see how that goes.

Leveling Alts Before MoP

Having achieved a lot of my goals for Cataclysm much earlier than I thought I would, I've been playing a lot of SWTOR lately.  I managed to get a Republic Trooper to the level cap, and I'm well on my way to having an Imperial Agent there as well.  During that time, my WoW activity has been limited to doing some auction house crafting activities each morning and running LFR on a couple of toons once a week.

However, I'm starting to get a little bored with the questing and leveling experience in SWTOR and I find myself coming back to WoW, like returning to and comfortable old blanket.  It really surprises me that I'm getting bored with running the quests on Dromund Kaas for the third time, but I seem to have no issue at all doing the same quests in Hellfire Peninsula for the 12th or 13th time in some cases.  Perhaps it is the familiarity, perhaps it's because WoW just seems more polished and runs better on my machine.  Some of it is certainly that the extended dialogue scenes at each quest pick up and turn in get to be tiresome and time consuming after a while.

The whole experience has really made me appreciate how polished and refined the questing experience has become in WoW.

I think part of it too is that in SWTOR you are constantly faced with a lot of Light Side / Dark Side ethical decisions impacting what appear to be real people, not fantasy creatures.  I play these games for entertainment and for escape from the difficult decisions of the real world.  I'm not sure I'm looking to be making those in my game too.

So I'm turning back to WoW, and I see that I have a whole stable full of alliance characters just waiting to be leveled!  So I'm going to dive back in and see how far I can get before the MoP drops.

I've already gotten my alliance Death Knight to 85, so I've got 9 characters left to go.  Here's where they currently stand:

Hunter - level 61
Paladin - level 16
Warlock - level 13
Rogue - level 13
Warrior - level 12
Mage - level 12
Druid - level 10
Shaman - level 10
Priest - level 10

At least in theory, at my normal pace, I should be able to gain 123 levels between now and when MoP launches, assuming a mid-September release.  That should allow me to get my hunter to 85 along with one other toon, and make pretty decent progress on yet another, or I could mess with all of them just a little bit.

We'll see how it goes.  I'm also going to take this opportunity to try out a few new addons that might be helpful for leveling and will report back here what I find in that category.

The End of A Bad Series of Rolls

So on the 41st attempt, I finally managed to win the roll for the tier shoulders on my death knight, ending an impressive string of futility.  This boosted my average iLvL by an impressive 3 points, by upgrading from my ZA/ZG shoulders and also by allowing me to switch from the tier head piece to the valor head piece.

So I now only need two more pieces of gear on the death knight, both of which can be obtained from the last half of LFR.

I'm debating which character to work on gearing next, but I think I've settled on working on the rogue, since that playstyle seems to match up better with my connection / lag issues.  Anything with a long cast time tends to be death for my dps.

Right now, SWTOR is holding my attention from a leveling standpoint, but there is at least a chance I might go back to working on Alliance characters prior to MoP release.