Ding 70!

  It finally happened at 3:00 AM Sunday night / Monday morning! I hadn’t played a whole lot of WoW on Sunday after scrambling for nearly all of Saturday in a desperate push to get Manchego to 70 in time for the Guild’s bi-weekly full-Kara funtime clear. When I knew that I was going to fall short – 2 bars from 69 by the time I went to bed the night prior – I just kind of bagged out on it. I resumed play on her somewhere around 9:30 or 10:00 at night Sunday and proceeded to demolish Netherstorm. It was quite enjoyable, really, now that I’m learning fun Shammy tricks. Like, every 20 minutes I can break out the Earth Elemental and go solo some elite for a quest. I found out the hard way pretty early on that he needs to be monitored for regular heals, but the kid can hold some aggro! Knowing what quests are where, and how to get through them in an economical manner was really helpful here, too. My wife whispered me in-game at about 2:30 and said “I hope you aren’t trying for 70 tonight”, as in “come to bed, it’s late”. When she did, though – I was less than three bars from the Big Ding. Nope, I wasn’t about to stop. Just a quick jaunt on down to Kirin’Tor Village where any experienced player can crush out 7 or 8 quests in about 1/2 hour, and there it was!

  Elapsed /played time to 70: 7 days, 20 hours. Considering I scarcely saw any rested XP after about level 27, save for the 1-2 bars that would come while at work or asleep – I’m pretty pleased with my levelling speed.

  Happily, I was able to craft all 6 of the Epic pieces that I had slated for 70 beforehand and had them waiting for me in the Area 52 bank. The full Netherstrike set, Living Dragonscale Helm, Living Earth Shoulders and Hurricane Boots. Yes, I know that 4/6 are DPS pieces. Gemmed off-socket with Teardrop Living Rubies, though, they’re pretty serviceable healing pieces for now. Good Mana return, and a lot higher Spell Crit than most of my Shammy counterparts as a result, if slightly gimpy on heals. Besides, once I get proper pieces to replace them with, I can just turn around and re-gem for a soloing DPS set. I did come up short on the weapon slot though, just some crappy L70 green healy mace. No way I’m gonna spend any cash to enchant that (or any other mace, short of the drops from Maiden and Prince), and I still need to get the ring from the “Hitting the Motherlode” quest… but I’m at a comfy +1169 heals right away, easily increased by 70 points if I get my mitts on an Essence Focusser and do that quest. Plenty sufficient for Kara.

  So now, I’ve got 6 x 70s, and WotLK is just 2 months off. Part of me is questioning the wisdom of gearing much of anything, since it’s ultimately going to be quickly replaced in the expansion. I may be better served to get through the last 9 levels on my Paladin so that I’m ready at the starting blocks with a 7th max-level toon.  Levelling them all to 80, that’s going to be some kind of a monster. I’m thinking that I’ll focus exclusively on Ribby to get him to 80, learn the quests and get a feel for Northrend. Once he’s there, I’ll have the luxury of rotating through the rest and always playing in blue XP for the duration or the journey. Hoping to have all 7 to 80 by somewhere around March-April if possible, but we’ll see. I’m leaning heavily towards NOT levelling the Death Knight until the majority of my current toons are at 80, if only to avoid the inevitable questing traffic jams that are bound to happen as soon as we can roll ‘em. I do have a slot reserved for one, though. Currently, that slot is holding the name “Gravedanger”, since I’m leaning Forsaken on mine (for aesthetics, if nothing else). However, should the lvl 22 Alliance Priest who has “Avery” (and whom, I might add, has not been online since January) choose to delete their toon and relinquish the name, I’d snap it up and make it a Blood Elf female. In case anyone is wondering, that’s the name my wife and I gave to our baby daughter, so, yeah… you bet she’d have to be a badass!

  Anyhow – vacation looms tomorrow, we’ll be travelling cross-country to Charleston, SC for my sister’s wedding… so no WoW til Sunday. Ness is fairly convinced that I can’t live without playing until then, which is kind of amusing. Given, I *do* play a lot at home – but mostly, I do so because it’s cheap. $15 a month for all the entertainment I’ll need, just buy me a few beers to help me along! Anyways, she keeps asking if we’re bringing the computer, and I keep saying “no, we aren’t”. I’m convinced that she’s expecting me to just throw the laptop in the car at the last minute.

Zangarmarsh: Point Break

  Without a doubt, it does feel like I’ve hit that sweet spot in Outlands levelling now. I was able to get through nearly all of the Zangarmarsh quests (still have the “Leader of the Darkcrest” one left) in about 2 days’ worth of part-time work. realistically, as fast as I could get to the spots, or gather whatever was pertinent, I was done with the quests. Some prior ones that had represented a challenge or nuisance to one degree or other – “No More Mushrooms!”, “Us or Them”, “Message to the Daggerfen” and “The Biggest of them All” come to mind, largely on the nuisance ticket – were quests that I was able to roll over with ease. I think a large part of this relates to Shaman versatility – Water Breathing, Water Walking, heavy ranged damage + decent enough melee survivability – but all in all, it just seems like it’s getting easier. Some quests, such as the Sporeggar / Cenarion ones in the southeast part of the zone, were ridiculously easy. Shaman hax indeed.

  I think a major portion of this happened when I trained 62. Water Shield is positively delicious. It has almost doubled my totem-free MP5 rate, and I’m fairly certain that instance healing at this point should be much smoother than it was in the past as the mana return from it is by no means insignificant. Add to that, it costs ZERO mana to cast, and returns mana when you get hit… I’m in love. I need to develop the habit of renewing it after every time I loot a mob, though since I tend to be forgetful about that so far. I didn’t renew Lightning Shield much because I didn’t want to burn the mana and the results just weren’t worth it to me, so I’m just not in the habit. It did kind of get me thinking, with the interruption reduction talent on healing spells, that Water Shield may be the gateway to effectively soloing nearly any PVE elites that are similarly levelled in an endurance fight. My damage output may be limited to gimpy caster weapon swings and Flame Shock debuffs, or whichever Fire Totem is in play, but somewhere between all of that and the soon-to-be-arriving elementals, I’m feeling pretty good. If I can punk Nerubis in Netherstorm, I’m willing to declare victory on this front… which reminds me, casters!

  Caster elites are some kind of fun now. I hate hate hate them with Ribeye, since lots of armor doesn’t really do so much for shadowbolts, but somewhere between Grounding Totems, Earthshocks and War Stomps, it’s pretty fun to try and stay on top of interrupts. I was able to one-shot the “Leader of the Bloodcrest” quest with the caster naga because of this. Lightning Bolt – Lightning Bolt – LolEarthshock, GG naga. It was pretty satisfying. Nice to be able to disrupt those War of the Worlds Bog Walkers, too, or the fungal guys in Dead Mire, or the Marshfang Rippers… ok, I’m enjoying this too much. Definite win in Shamans.

  Raised a few eyebrows in /g today by declaring that Manchego would be ready to heal Heroics as soon as I ding 70.  Sure, it’s not like I’d have a full Kara / SSC Shaman set or anything, but I’ll be able to get plenty of good stuff crafted by then. I’m going to be doubling up with the Netherstrike set to start off since it’s really the best that’s available to me, though re-gemming it later will turn it into a fine Elemental set so I’m not particularly broken up about the sacrifice. Farming up the mats, there’s one part that doesn’t excite me too much. I made up a “to do” list for 70, and among the items still to procure:

• 42 Primal Air
• 36 Primal Mana
• 72 Nether Dragonscales
• 22 Wind Scales
• 10 Primal Water
• 6 Primal Nether

  So, yeah. I think that there’s 1-3 of most items there kicking around in my various banks, but most of that is gonna have to farmed. Hours on end of Hiltz flying around Nagrand in the roflcopter, looking for Windy Clouds that aren’t located in a borked location that won’t be changing until next server restart. Fun. Maybe I’ll just use the mining proceeds to buy the darn things and meet myself in the middle.

  …And that’s the runup to this weekend. *Just* landed in Terrokar Forest, started into Earthbinder Tavgren’s quests, but nearly everything else is open and I’m ~2/3 of the way to 64. I think that my previously stated “65 by the end of Sunday” is looking pretty realistic.

So, Outlands!

  Hit 58 and moved up in the world over the weekend – and glad it was a 3-day, though I didn’t WoW night-and-day to level the Shammy, I managed a significant amount of playing time. She’s up to 62 now, just on the cusp of that Outlands break-point that you hit where all of a sudden, quests become less challenging and more a matter of ripping out the reqs as fast as you can.

  I’m really pretty surprised with her overall viability to date, but I’m finding that a number of quests – specifically, “Zeth’gor Must Burn!”, “The Demonic Scryer” and the Arrakoa ones south of Falcon Watch – are a lot smoother than I remember them being on any of the five toons that Preceeded her. Hiltz had a pretty easy go of most of them, I recall… Ribby probably would have too, but for the fact that I was levelling with a resto build (har har). Still, her versatility has been pretty amazing. I’ve healed Ramps and BF so far, despite only scratching the surface of the second-tier resto talents and possessing minimal true healing gear. Some issues with going OOM, but I’m sure that will improve as the levels pass by and I can get my mitts on more +MP5 gear. From a world standpoint, she’s getting pretty mashy with the damage numbers, too. I’m not very comfortable with her ability to go one-on-one with a similarly levelled elite at this point (though, Boglash is on the Horizon), but she has fared pretty well through questing. I’m interested to see what Zangarmarsh brings now that I’m just about done with my Outlands acclimation stage in Hellfire Peninsula.

  Managed to level the Paladin to 61 as well… the wife’s Mage recently got to Outlands, so we’re trying to quest together when the baby is down. Seems to be a very effective tandem, I consecrate ‘em up and she AOEs ‘em down! Not much of a sample size to work with to date since there really isn’t a lot of time when the baby permits us an hour or two to run, but very encouraging (but for my constant drinking!)

  Unofficial target at this point is to hit 65 by the time that I go to bed Sunday night. I’m making striking progress with Leatherworking, all the way up to 363. The last 12 points are a doozy, but I’m happy that I’ve made it that far already. It’ll be great to have a full-on heals set ready to go the moment I ding 70!