Small Steps

I haven't reported on progress for a while, for the simple reason there really hasn't been any. At least, not significant (in my eyes).

Sure, the guild cleared ICC-25 of all but Putricide and Blood Queen but really, those are the two bosses that I would like to report as taken down since taking them down means we can advance, but so far no luck. We have not even tried Blood Queen 25 yet and Putricide best attempt was 6% which is not bad, but not good enough ofc.

Earlier this week in 10-man a group consisting of 2 of our 3 main tanks and 3 of our best healers cleared all of ICC-10 including Blood Queen, so at least in 10-man the guild advanced as a whole. However since I was not in that kill and since a group consisting of a main tank and an off-specced or alt tank is hardly likely to be as successful, my personal advancement remains stalled.

Hence the small steps title - yes I have advanced in downing intermediate bosses in 25man ICC, but not the end-bosses. I've gotten new gear for Solidfaith and am actually pleased with his advancement in that respect. I keep doing the daily random heroic each day even on raiding days in order to get as many Frost Emblems as possible.

I've also gotten more emblems for both Solidd and Solidstar, but due to heavy raiding and focus on Solidfaith, there were many days where I did not do a daily random heroic with them.

Finally one nice thing I did was level Locksolid slightly yesterday. What happened was I was trying to help a friend with a 10man raid in ToGC-10 but for several reasons it fell apart. I was not in the mood for more heroics on Solidstar and had already done on Solidfaith and Solidd. Well as it turns out I had spoken the day before with a friend who was leveling a Shaman and he leveled 6 levels in one day just from grinding random instances (he started level 22 and got all the way to 28). This story made me very interested to see if I could level that quickly also. Since Locksolid was left at level 67 still doing quests in TBC areas and at 68 could start in Northrend quests, I decided to give it a try.

I logged Locksolid and signed up on the LFD tool. While I waited I continued with some more questing and pretty soon (I think it was around 15min, not sure) I was prompted with the party ready-check interface. Once inside, our group, composed of a paladin tank, priest healer and 2 other DPS promptly proceeded to totally smash the place.

This was Sethekk Halls. None of us was over-leveled for the instance (67 was highest level). None I assume were over-geared, since who tries to maximize leveling gear? Sure, BoA items are better than average usually, but even though the healer did a pretty lousy job, mobs were being taken down so fast my DoTs were pretty useless and I was pretty much forced into a hasty single instant-DoT and Rain-of-Fire. Pulling was non-stop and we were always at 50% health, it never mattered. So, either I'm remembering heroic Sethekk Halls and normal was always this easy (which I doubt) or Blizzard nerfed the hell out of lower instances. We did wipe once due to pulling too many mobs and getting 2 people MC'd, but that was the single time. Considering some of the crazy pulls we did, I am amazed we didn't wipe more times.

After finishing the instance in record time, the tank signed us up for another. The priest left but a druid healer (who was much better BTW) replaced him in under 10 seconds. We got Auchenai Crypts which used to be a hard instance but again, we nuked the place. I was actually using Hellfire on some trash pulls since the Druid was barely having to heal so I figured he would not have any problems. Helped my DPS by a lot, although the paladin tank still came up on top of damage done :)

I dinged 68 in the middle of the AC run, so that's 1/2 a level in about 1 full run, including rest-XP. I don't think I would have had the patience to do 12 runs (or more) in order to gain 6 levels but I see how it can be done, which makes instance-leveling one of the best (fastest) ways to level, assuming you get a good group.

I've already parked Locksolid in the Borean Tundra starting zone after doing a couple of initial quests there before logging out for the night. I hope raiding leaves me with some more time to play him as once again I find playing a warlock is immense fun :)