Solidd at 64, massive PuG-ing ;)

Last night I was playing Solidd, doing quests in Zangramash. I still had 2 quests in Blood Furnace however so I was in the LFG channel hoping to get a tanking job :)

I got an invite from a paladin and accepted and found myself in a PuG for BF but as a DPS, turns out the paladin was the tank. That actually worked out well because we had no CC at all - DPS were me (a feral druid), a fury warrior and a warlock. So without any CC, a paladin's AOE-tanking style worked well. It also helped that we were all level 63 or higher so the mobs went down quick and the healer mostly had no problem keeping the tank or us up (the healer was a shaman).

We did wipe a couple of times but overall the run went very smoothly compared to the usual PuG, and when the warrior suggested we continue to Slave Pens everyone agreed. So we continued to Zangramash and did Slave Pens as well, of course it was a bit harder/slower compared to Blood Furnace but still we did well. I switched a few times from cat form to caster or bear form as required to help with healing or OT which also I think helped in a couple of tight spots.

At the end of Slave Pens I was near level 64 and I still had time and some quests in UB so I said "why not do Underbog"? Well the healer had to go but we quickly got a level 67 holy priest and I was sure the UB run would also go smooth. Alas, either because we were a bit low or because it was getting late and people were tired, we made more mistakes than usual. Also frankly the healer was not so hot, esp. for a level 67. She even ran out of drinking water mid-instance. How do you not come to an instance with enough water? Aaannnyway, after the 2nd boss the warrior had to go and we continued to 4 man the instance, up to the last boss. 3rd boss was actually pretty easy, I off-tanked the bear (bear vs. bear! :)) and this gave the others the time needed to take down the boss. However the last boss reset mid-fight once (so annoying when he does that), wiped us twice and I guess due to the hour and having to run the entire instance to get to the boss the paladin tank decided I guess he had enough and left :(

So now it was down to me, the warlock and the priest. Luckily the priest was a friend of the warlock and wanted to help him and had a level 70 warlock char and I had a holy paladin in the guild who was free to come for a couple of minutes, so with 2 level 70 chars and me tanking poor "Black Stalker" didn't have a chance :)

The nice thing about getting to 64 through instances is that I still have a whole bunch of quests to return now, which means I will get to level 65 that much faster :)

Grinding Sporeggar Rep

Last night I didn't feel like leveling Solidd, so I logged on Solidfaith and tried out the LFG channel, hoping to increase my Shatar rep (need exalted to be able to use Illidari Marks). I was invited by 2 DPS guys to a party and we waited for around 40 minutes for a tank for normal Mech (which was the daily). Alas, none showed up and in the end we gave up.

While we waited I did some daily quests for rep and gold and that reminded me I wanted to grind Sporeggar rep on Solidstate in order to be able to get the new 28-slot Herb bag recipe which will be introduced in patch 2.4.3. So after the PuG fell apart I logged on Solidstate and went to Zangramash. I figured I would do the Now That We're Still Friends quest a couple of times and get tired of it. But luckily for me, a shadow-priest friend of mine was in the area and had the same idea (to level his rep). So we teamed up and it was the fastest rep grind I ever did. Basically he just rode around getting agro from a bunch of mobs and brought them to me, then I did my AOE stuff while he healed me (even shadow priests can heal you know :)). We managed to grind the mobs so quickly we did around 10k rep in around 1 hour, which is amazing. I'm now half-way to exalted :)

The funny thing is I didn't remember correctly, I only need revered rep to get the recipe. Oh well, it can't hurt to be exalted :)

Midsummer Fire Festival

Initially I didn't intend to do the Fire Festival quests since I always think of the fluff rewards as silly plus I don't have the bag space for them, and my level 70 chars only get gold from the quests which is nice but not something I need at the moment.

However I forgot that for a leveling alt, the quests can give great XP. Thanks to great advice from Kaliope I took Solidd through several Alliance and Horde towns and ended up leveling to 62 (from about 3/4 in level 61) just thanks to XP from the Festival quests. This was not only a nice break from the usual leveling grind but also a fairly quick way to level without using any rested XP.

Tip for other Alliance chars doing the Torch Tossing quest: I tried doing that in both Darnassus and Stormwind and SW was a much better place. The ground in Darnassus makes it hard to see the shadow dot of the torch while in SW I could easily see and follow the torch's shadow. I easily completed both the torch quests and the daily torch quests and so will now have some nice daily quests to do on Solidd. Although I'm not sure, do daily quests give XP below level 70?

Later on I also used the rested XP I had with the 10% XP bonus from the ribbon-dance to get around 1.1k XP from each mob I killed in a couple of quests I did in HFP. Good XP/hour for sure :)

I'm now at around level 62.5 and still have all of the Cenarion quests in HFP as well as the Talmahat ones, and also I might do a BF run since I now have a quest for it, after doing Ramparts as a DPS. I forgot to blog about that but since I didn't tank it there was nothing very noteworthy to tell. Well maybe for me the highlight of the run was where before the first boss I rezzed the healer in the middle of the fight with some trash, first time I've ever used Battle Rez :)

In any case I will reach level 63 in HFP for sure, which is pretty funny. I expect I'll probably get to level 70 without doing a single quest in Netherstorm or SMV. Will have lots of gold waiting for me... :)

Tanking BF

I had some time in the last few days to play Solidd, managed to level to 61. Even better, I got my first real tanking job.

I was registered on the LFG channel to the Ramparts instance, hoping to join a PuG as a tank. But instead of ramparts I got a /w from a guy asking me if I wanted to tank BF. Well I was already level 61 which is the minimum level for BF, so I figured I could do it.

We got going, happily the group organizer promoted me to leader as soon as we entered. Not to brag but I've been in all of the instances (well nearly all) enough times to know them well and I know how to pull and how not to. I prefer not wiping due to another person's inexperience in marking/pulling. Anyway the run went great, we had one pull which was very bad, I tried to pull a caster myself and without silence on him he simply stopped mid-way and this caused other mobs close by to get pulled. Or maybe I got too close? Regardless we wiped but I was smarter later, using the MM hunter and S-priest we had to silence the caster and making him run to us, plus it is much easier for a hunter to do a ranged pull. Other than that wipe the run went very smooth, I didn't manage to hold agro on all the mobs but usually I either got it back quickly or the healer and the other DPS managed to handle the mob on their own.

Overall it was a very positive run for me personally and a great run compared to the usual PuG. I even got good feedback on my tanking from the other people in the group and that felt good :)

Officering and ZA

I haven't played on Solidd for the last few days, except to get him to Outlands and place him in the inn at Honor Hold.

For one thing, I was promoted to officer in my guild, so I had to spend some time recruiting and looking at the guild roster and talking to other officers and suchlike boring stuff, all of which cut down on my actual WoW time. I don't mind it though because I believe I can do a good job helping my guild recruit and advance in raiding, which is important for me.

Another reason I didn't play on Solidd was because on both Tuesday and Wednesday I went with a guild run to ZA and we downed 3 bosses each time. The same 3 bosses actually due to the reset on Wednesday. It was fun but challenging, the fights in ZA are incredibly hard and intensive with people taking up huge amounts of damage, leading to my going OOM on nearly every boss fight. Compare this to SSC or TK where I have yet to go OOM on a boss fight, even on the harder bosses we've reached/downed so far (Solarian and Morogrim).

Actually I didn't mean to go on Wednesday's run but one of the healers in the raid, a paladin who was on trial status in the guild, started to DC a lot, got angry and insluting after wipes and in the end left the raid saying he didn't want to raid again with the raid leader. Since the raid leader is a MT for the guild and an officer who frequently leads raids, this was obviously a problem for the healer and after some quick discussion between the officers (quick as all supported this) the paladin was kicked from the guild. Shame since we are lacking healers, but the guy was a real idiot with an attitude problem. Well life goes on, the paladin got into another (Kara-level) guild 5 minutes after leaving us and we will simply have to look for more healers who are more mature. Good luck to all of us :)

Goodbye Azeroth, Hello Outlands

Solidd has reached level 60 and is heading to Outlands. Except for returning a couple of quests marked "complete" I don't plan to do any more traveling in the Old World, unless necessary.

I did want to get to 60 in order to make it easier and faster for me when starting in Outlands, but now that I hit my (admittedly arbitrary) mark I would much rather continue in Outlands, where the quests I think are much better.

Hopefully I will be able to gear up from quests in Outland well enough to tank a normal Ramparts run, if I manage to get a group for that. If I do it will be my first real tanking experience.

All in all it has been pretty easy and fast to level to 60, the reduction in required XP/level and the increase in XP/quest has really made a difference. I guess I will miss it now that I will start the leveling process from 60 to 70. On the other hand the well organized structure of Outland quests and the smaller areas to cover should make it easier. Also I already have my epic land mount, with a reduced cost thanks to my Exalted reputation with Darnassus.

Interesting times ahead :)

Support for Kaliope!

How do you show your appreciation for a blogger you enjoy reading! Support her in her attempts to get a Beta Key for WotLK!

Can we do it? YES!! Does Blizzard give a rat’s ass?? Probably not!! Will we let that stop us?? NOT ON YOUR LIFE!! KALIOPE FTW!!!

I hearby nominate Kaliope for a WotLK Beta Key. Go go Kaliope! :D

I love MH trash

Last night we went to MH. It took us a couple of tries before we took down Rage Winterchill and after a try on the second boss we decided to call it a night. Personally as a healer I find that between the damage from the boss, the damage from the infernals and the curse from the boss, that fight is insanely hard. But I know hard-core raiders consider it easy, so what do I know? :)

So anyway why do I say I love MH trash? Because we got lucky with all the trash we went through, in terms of epic drops :) My priest won a very nice pair of healing boots and so did another holy priest, and 2 shadow priests each won a very nice caster-dps mace. There were also at least 2 shadow-damage cloaks that dropped. So all-in-all, a good raid for the guild, even though the loot from the 1st boss was a bit weak :)

In addition, since many Hearts of Darkness dropped, I asked for and received 4 and another guild mate made me the Swiftheal Wraps bracers. After gemming and enchanting I now have over 2k healing unbuffed, which is simply awesome :)

Hopefully I can start concentrating now on +spell haste in order to improve my healing even more :)

The 40-50's Blues

My Moonkin druid is coming up on level 48 (just one bar away when I stopped to go to sleep last night). It hasn't been easy since level 40...

In terms of questing, levels 40-50 have always been the hardest/most-boring for me. Even on my hunter I found these levels a bit of a chore, and we all know how easy it is to level a hunter :)

I guess it doesn't make it easier that I chose to go Moonkin. Moonkin druids are a great support class and a caster group in a raid will always welcome a Moonkin thanks to the awesome +5% spell crit aura. However they are less than ideal for leveling and I've been having a hard time with some quests. I solved this by usually doing only easier (green or yellow) quests instead of doing orange or red quest as I did with my hunter, but that just adds to the boredom of these levels.

It doesn't help that this is the 4th character I am leveling to 70 and knowing all of these quests by having done them multiple times before, takes the interest and "magic" out of the process. The only point of light were the couple of levels I leveled using the new Dustwallow Marsh quests. These were well done, fun and most importantly, new :) However as I said those helped but didn't get me all the way to 50.

Still the light at the end of the tunnel is getting closer as I see level 50 approaching. I will be able to continue leveling in zones I like much more such as Un'goro Crater and WPL, maybe even do a BRD run or two. I am also strongly considering speccing back to feral, since I plan to do it anyway at 60. If it helps my leveling, why not? The only problem is I'll have to grind daily quests on my mage for a couple of days to raise the gold to buy new feral/tanking gear for my bear, but really I don't see a problem with that, it's for a good cause :) Plus my bear will be able to save up some much needed rest-XP.

I think I've just talked myself into something :)