Venture Co. pwnd me

I thought I was getting the hang of my mage. I could solo pretty much any mob up to two or three levels above me, but this weekend I learned that soloing a single mob is much different than soloing multible mobs. What I worked on this weekend for the most part was Stonetalon, more specifically the Windshear Crag area with all the Venture Co. guys cutting down all the trees. There were a couple shredding machines I had to take down first, which turned out to be pretty easy to get because I got lucky on both and my initial frost bolts rooted them and I had no trouble burning them down from there, didn't even need to use frost nova.

Then it came time for me to journey to the top of the hill above the lake there and take out the main boss guy of this particular operation. I was a little surprised to see a level 27 hanging out with a bunch of level 20-21 mobs, but I was level 24 so I should have a good chance if I can pull him alone. Actually the problem started well before I even was able to get to the guy, as I had to clear the mobs on the way first, so I start on my way in and right off the bat I start having trouble because of LOS issues. It's one of those platform structures those guys always use, with lots of ramps and railings, and if the mob you're going after is up the ramp from you he is out of your sight range until you are at the top of the ramp. This really doesn't help a mage out at all since it also means you have to step into his aggro proximity before you can fire anything off at him. I managed it on a couple mobs, and then came to the next one, started it out just as I had the others, but this was one of those guys that summons a little robot guy as a pet and sends him at you. Now normally I can deal with this too, but when there's also a patrol that walks up when I've almost killed the first mob, and then that mob runs and is able to grab another before I can take him down, I tend to have some trouble. So if you haven't guessed already, I wasn't able to make it out of that situation alive, but the first mob did die, so when I rezzed I didn't have to deal with him again. And not only did I not have to deal with him, apparently someone else had come in while I was on my corpse run and killed all the mobs, including the quest mob I needed. Now it was just a waiting game, and the mobs were respawning pretty fast so I figured I'd get close to the quest mob, only kill the mobs that could potentially cause trouble when I pulled him and wait it out. Little did I know that this particular mob took about 4 times longer to respawn than the other mobs, meaning I literally had to kill everything else 4 times before this guy showed up again. Oh sure, I was getting some XP out of it, and the quest reward was an upgrade for my gear, so it wasn't all bad, but those robot summoning mobs are hard to contend with and half the time I was barely getting through those fights. Finally the quest mob spawned and I killed him, took his arm, and jumped off the platform into the water. I'm still not sure if completing this quest was worth it, but it pretty much got to the point that I was so far in I had to finish it off.

The rest of my time was spent killing a mob in a cave in Stonetalon, then turning in the quests before journeying to Ashenvale where I picked up both flight paths and killed some nagas. The rest of the Ashenvale quests I will be saving for later, because next time I'm on I will be making my way to Tarren Mill to get some quests done and probably get ganked a bunch. To finish off my play time I traveled to the Undercity, learned my new mage skills, completed a mage quest I had been putting off for about 10 levels, and then flew to the Sepulcher where I will pick up again next time to run down to Hillsbrad. All in all I think this weekend was fairly productive givent he amount of time I actually played, not to mention running all the way across Ashenvale for that Zoram'Gar flight path is pretty boring, but it has to be done and now I don't have to do it again...except on my other three horde characters. Ugh.