Life Post 2.4

2.4 has not been good to me. Not in the sense that it’s not fun because it is, but because honestly I don’t have the time to grind dailies. Well not exactly true, I don’t find dailies FUN. Add to that the fact that it’s a little island that all 70s that are sick of the other content are there and the fun kind of seeps away in seconds. I’ve done the bombing quest a couple of times but the rest of the dailies? They don’t spawn fast enough to really make it worth my while to sit around and wait. Someone made note that if you did all the dailies, including the ones originally gives at the onset of BC you could make roughly 300g a day.

That’s an impressive number but you have to the desire to do them regularly. I don’t.

So instead I went and did a couple of other things.

First let me say this to all Alliance players that were gripping about AV before the patch hit, you shouldn’t have said anything. Since 2.4 I have not won ONE contest in AV, which is shocking to me since I got my entire honor that way for the pvp gear that Lubacca is currently wearing. The reason I know this is because I decided to respec Luciel back to enhancement and I thought, I’ll grind some honor, get some tokens and get him some decent gear….well that’s going to be made probably twice as hard now due to the fact that the honor and badges will take longer to get. Sure you get more honor from kills now but if you lose AV you get nil, which still means minimal return.

My days look like this now:

Log in #1: Lubacca
I log into Lubacca for several reasons. First, he’s my main and if someone wants to get a MrT run going, that’s who I’m going to use. Secondly, he’s got all my money and is my cash cow with Alchemy. At some point I’ll get the reagents for the alchemy stone, as well as the rep eventually, I’m not worried about it. I go out and do some herb gathering (that whole, Fel Blossom will drop more stuff? Yea, that’s not true.) make some pots, put them on AH and log out.

Log in #2: Luciel
Now that he’s Enhancement again I find it fun. I’m not nearly as much of a DPS guy with Luciel for some reason, I don’t think I have enough spell hit or something but I still have fun in the BGs. I run about four a day, enough for about 1k honor and some badges. Not much else with this one really. If someone is running a regular instance…which is rare, I might jump in with Luciel and hope for some nice loot.

Log in #3: Lubrona
Currently sitting at level 31, this is where I start to feel the drag of a toon until about 40. It’s the hardest time for me and I don’t know why. I’ll try to bash out as many quests as I can but honestly, I am currently finding it exhausting to deal with this one. Once I get the mount that will get better, plus I’ll start hitting some areas that I actually enjoy, like Tanaris. I’ve started to use the Drain Tank Method and it works, I just end up not having enough space for the stupid stones from draining….if I don’t use Draining Life. Suggestions?

Log in #4: McGregor
Strictly to just sit around and grind some leather in hopes of getting enough to maybe make some Drums of War for Luciel or just to put up on AH. This one has really just been mistreated.

Note: I’ve spent roughly 7k gold on getting flight for my characters.

For the Enhancement Shamans out there that enjoy PVP, what do you find will help you most with getting out the most damage against your opponents?

Honestly I knew this was going to happen, it’s the lull before the next big thing. I know that WotLK is coming around the corner, but between now and then, what? I don’t want to switch guilds but I just might with one of my toons long enough to see something fun.

How about you guys? What are you up to now that 2.4 has dropped?

My Favorite high level area.

When I was leveling my first 70 what I heard from everyone that had already hit 70 was “Go to Shadowmoon, go to Shadowmoon.” Of course they meant Shadowmoon Valley, a place where many of us grind our teeth at. However we all grind those teeth for different reasons, for me the reason is that I feel like I got spoiled with the lush scenery of Zangarmarsh, the Forest and Nagrad only for them to pull the run RIGHT from under me and throw me back into a hell looking environment. It’s not one of my favorites, can you tell?

While there are some great quests in SMV, I don’t like the look. In Nagrad, however, I feel completely at home. You know it might be that it’s because Nesingway is out there hunting wabbits…er I mean, hunting wildlife. (Why do we have to do all the dirty work) but I will say that’s the area that most reminds me of Azeroth in the manner that I remember it when I was working my way up to 60 and then 70.

It’s a bunch of kill quests. You have to love quests that you give you experience on top of experience for finishing the quest. (The only thing that was missing was a quest collecting pages) I have found that I love this area the most. Yes grinding can be a pain in the rear BUT think about it. If you’re a leatherworker, this is heaven. All the creatures that you kill either drop Knothide leather or scraps that you can turn into leather, you can get some feathers and other odds and ends that you can sell for a bit of profit (I can turn in 20 feathers for a little over a gold.). Add to that the ogres. Sure they’re ugly and hit hard BUT two things happen. Usually you’ll get a decent amount of silver and netherweave cloth. I have to healing classes and I still use the stuff.

I’ll even give you a little secret most people don’t even consider. If you sell a stack of cloth you’ll get about 2 gold. If you turn the stack into bandages you’ll get 6 gold from the vendors. (So instead of 4 gold for 2 stacks of 20, you get 6 gold for that same 2 stacks turned into bandages. Hey that’s an extra 2 gold!)

The other aspect of this place that I truly enjoy is the rep grind. You have to grind rep to even get all of the other quests available to you. Of course this is made easy with two starter quests that ask for some silly stuff. There are also three different ogre areas where you can kill them all and gain experience, rep, gold and cloth. It’s really the Wal-Mart of WoW.

Luciel comes of age!

This weekend Luciel, my Alliance Shaman, came of age and hit 70 on Sunday Morning. He spent eleven hours on level 69 before getting the ding that ended his leveling until the next expansion.

I spent the last three levels bouncing from the three points of quests in Blade’s Edge Mountains and Shadow Moon Valley. I’ll tell you now that the Cipher of Damnation quest, was a HUGE chunk of not only time but also XP for me this time around. It helped that I had a group of guildies that were willing to do the Damnation chain with me. While most of the quests a player can do solo, there are two instances in which you need a group. One of them being Ruul and the other is the main event itself.

If you’re wondering how the event starts, you have to go to the Altar of Damnation in Shadow Moon, the first piece of the quests is the angry rock and fire essence captures, then water and then you are sent to the farm stead where the chain begins in earnest. I would say that the quest chain takes you about ¾ of the way through 69 if you do it alone. Yes, I’m serious.

While this blog will continue to focus on Shaman and anything to do with them, I’m now moving to leveling my Paladin. I respecced my Shaman for healing (Currently sitting at Plus 733 healing) and will make the Paladin a tank (Just respecced to Prot) so there will be a little on Paladins on here from time to time.

I haven’t forgotten about my Shaman series, I imagine I will have another post for that series tonight.

Happy Slaying!

66 and more!

So I dinged 66 last night, thank you thank you (Imagining applause). I have to say that by far, right now my favorite area to go and level in is Nagrad. There's a pleothra of quests once you reach at least neutral and then after that, man it's easy to get up to friendly and so on. The fact that alot of the quests don't have to be done in two man groups or higher and you just enjoy soaking up all of that XP. I know that the ring of blood quests need a 5 man but even then, that's a small chain that can be cleaned out quickly and still made to feel like fun. I'll probably have 4 bubbles of rested xp when I get home that I can't wait to burn through. Of course Forester, my brother has already hit 68 and will be coasting to 70 this weekend and then gloating about it because, you know he'll have a flying mount. Mumblemumble.

Other news for the day, Trina's significant other, Dissection, has rejoined the ranks of WoW players. He quit a little bit after the expansion but we finally talked him into coming back. He's brought over his 60 hunter from another server and is going to level him to 70. D is a good player, he's got several toons at 60 over int he Horde side and this is his only high level Alliance. It's funny that it's his first toon that he's coming back to but it seems that he's enjoying the life of a hunter at the moment.

Also dealing with guild, Darkzealot, came back last night. I wasn't there for his return, I had to work late HOWEVER, my thoughts of him having left due to the drama that the last group of deserters gave us. He did take it personally and honestly, he has every right to. With everything that's gone on with the game and the friendships that you make, how could you not?

I don't know if I've told you but I've leveled two Shamans and my horde shaman has hit 70, did it a while ago and has purples and a flying mount to prove it. I think it's interesting that before, each person would have his/her own way of 'power-leveling'. For the longest time my brother and i would laugh. I would BURN through 1-40 and then slow down when he would pick up speed and just THROTTLE through the last 20 levels. Now with the new patch, all of the trade secrets of a power leveler are almost wasted. Even with that said, I'll share with you the things that I've done in the past to level faster.

I would post more but it's a busy day at work, yea I know that's just wrong, and I need to finish up my paperwork if I want to manage to leave this place on time.

Kara, drama and everything in between

How was the weekend friends? Was it everything you hoped it would be or was it less that you desired? For me it was a mixture of both.

While the Hooved Mrs. didn't feel well this weekend and took it easy, I was busy with guild duties.

First let's comment on Friday. As I said on Thursday, I tried to get into Kara and it was a no go because I was an hour late. Friday was different. My brother, Forester, called me and told me that they were WAITING for me because they needed dps. I hustled home, got on my hunter and headed to Kara where we lived for about SEVEN hours until we finally downed Romeo and Juilet. We went ahead and cleared to Curator and called it a night.

Saturday is when the drama started.
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I was on my Shaman, working my way up to 65 (Which I dinged this weekend and am already halfway through) when one of the pillars of the guild logged in.

A little history on DIVINE FORSAKEN; it's a multi-game community. Which means that while we have a guild on both the Horde and Alliance side in WoW, we also play everything else like LOTR, Tabula Rasa, CSS and anything else that might be MMO style, including Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4. So many of the players that we have, have played together for several years.

Darkzealot is one of those long time players. He's been playing so long that he has a Teamspeak server set up for us that can house enough players that we can run a 25 man comfortably and still have people in the lobby chatting it up. He also has been the one that put together our website, maintains it and allows us to have DF Radio. (that's right, we have our own tunes playing at any given time)

So, I'm questing away Saturday morning when he comes in game. He is usually the type of guy that will type something like "GET'ER DONE!" when he walks in cause he's just like that.

This is all he typed when he came in on Saturday:


Thank you DF for all the fun times that we had together. You guys are going down the right trackm just keep moving.

/gquit

I know that most of you are thinking, "So?"

You have to understand that he LOVES the guild but more importantly, he plays other games with us and uses the TS server so he would get bombarded with questions as to why in God's name he would leave. So he did what any rational man would do, he took down the TS server.

No explination.

No word to anyone.

Just gone.

Personally? I consider him a friend. He and I would go back and forth and harass each other non-stop about the dumbest things and have good laughs. His leaving REALLY took me off guard. I would not want to celebrate someone's departure. My first and only thought is, we are cancelling Kara for the night. I mean seriously why not? It's a good way to mourn the leaving of one of the important people in the guild. I tell this to some of the officers and what I get back is, "Why bother? He left us in the lurch, we shouldn't stop what we're doing because he's gone."

Granted I'm an emtional sap but that struck me as odd. I mean this guy was everyone's friend. He stuck up for the people that no one wanted to stand up for. He was always willing to help with a run, always willing to help with money in game. How difficult would it be to just take one day off when the instance is going to rest in 3 days? Plenty of time to still do whatever.

Kara was still run.

From what I understand it went well. They took down Curator and did the Chess event which garnered good pixels for all around. It was after this that things went south again.

Most of our players that were in Kara Group One suddenly said good bye and left the guild. It seems that they were the reason, the catalyst for Darkzealot to feel like he needed a break from WoW. They had told him earlier in the morning of their proposed plan and had taken it personally. These were people that he had stood up for time and again. When we booted a group of people recently, it was at the behest of this same group because they felt that the booted group was not contributing to the guild. Now here they were, doing the same to us. Yes it was hurtful, they had planned within themselves for a week but had never even bothered to tell the guild leader of what they were thinking of doing.

Of course the guild is fine. We still have a plethora of 70s, many of which are Kara tuned to run 2 groups at the same time. We still have the desire to do endgame content at some point but what alot of people don't realize is that there is life outside of WoW and that's what gets them bent out of shape.

I wanted to write all of this out to see if it made more sense. Some of the people that left I truly felt were good people, they still are good people, they just decided to take a different path.

Such is life.

Hitting 64

So yesterday I made my first post and my Alliance Shaman hit 64. Let me tell you that 64 was a well earned level. Out of all of the content that's in Outlands I found that getting from 63 to 64 was the equivalent of getting from 60 to 61. Not only was it difficult but it was long. Take also into account that this is the first level that I've done since hitting sixty without going out and doing some kind of instance.

The road before me looks to be a bit dicer as the days go on. I've moved my hunter over to the same server and I know have the ability to go to Kara with my guild but then that also means sacrificing good time leveling Luciel. Plus trying to juggle home life as well, the wife wants some time with me and I can't have wife aggro.

The other thing that I noticed is that I had gone ahead and banked some high level stuff for when I hit 64 but it no where near improved my stats to a better quality than what I currently have. It's a fine line between having some nice blues and better greens. I'm still carrying around the 2h Mace from level 61 because it's incredibly useful and nothing better has dropped yet. Waiting on my Oathkeeper.

What do you guys find is better in terms of loot? Would you rather have the sight of blues in your equipped table or feel better with greens that service your needs?