Rogues, my only weakness

As you may or may not know, my very first character was a rogue. He was the first to reach level 60 in vanilla WoW, and I even started doing some instances before the first expansion was released, then I pretty much gave up on him to play a druid and priest, and eventually others.

The thing about rogues that I have trouble with is their lack of healing, especially with their low armor value and the fact that they are pretty much melee only. This results in fairly slow leveling in comparison with most other classes, who tend to either have a healing spell they can use, or stick to attacking from range and don't take much damage. Warriors are the exception, but they have much better armor to mitigate damage.

Why am I bringing this up? Because I have started leveling my rogue again. Getting to endgame content on four other characters has shown me the new stuff rogues have gotten since I left mine behind, and I want to check out what I've been missing. I also am getting a little bored with endgame stuff and need something else to do for a while.

The transition is a little different than normal for me. I think it's a combination of just how long it's been since I played a rogue, and the fact that my main is a feral cat druid with very similar controls.

So far things are going well, but I need to level my first aid skill to keep downtime to a minimum. Other than that I'm finding it to be much less of a grind than before. I'm not sure if I chose better talents or if rogues are just better now than they used to be, but where I was usually resting every two battles I can fight many more in a row now.

So for now it looks like I will be working on my rogue. I think I will shoot for getting him to level 70, then I will probably need a break from him, but I want to get through Outland at least before it comes to that.

My main goal at this point is to get epic flying for my priest. She's been at level 80 for so long and still flies around like slow poke. That's why I'm back to questing again. It seems to be the fastest way to earn money for me at this point.

80s Madness

A couple weeks ago I went on a binge and leveled up my shaman all the way to 80. It seems to get faster and faster with each successive character, but I'm not planning on doing too much leveling in the near future. Surprised? I was too, but I have other things to focus on.

First off, I have no idea what I want to do with Keldreth, my hunter. At first I was going to use her to farm Heroic Underbog in an attempt to become exalted with Cenarion Expedition and buy the hipporgryph mount. Only problem is her gear isn't good enough to for her to be able to solo the instance, so there goes that idea. For now she's on hold.

Blackbare will continue to be my main, running Heroics with my friends and guildmates to gear up. I've gotten some pretty lucky drops, and he's well on his way to having all purples. That's about all I use him for at the moment, but I will have to quest through Ice Crown eventually, even if it's only to get money from the quests.

Vonari is a little different. She will be running BG's and just be my PvP character for now. I have geared her up in a few instances, but I'm thinking she will just stick to getting most of her gear through PvP.

Avialle gets to be my guinea pig at gearing up on my own. I've been running normal dungeons with her for gear, and now she can queue for most of the heroics as well. I'm gearing her up strictly on my own, without guild help, just to see if I can do it without getting too frustrated with PuG's. It hasn't been bad so far, this new cross-server LFG tool really works well.

As for all the lower level characters, I probably won't be using them much for a while. Now that the endgame stuff doesn't require such long playing sessions to get anywhere, and the fact that I have 4 characters that are at that level, I think I will stick to playing them the majority of the time. Probably better to save the others for Cataclysm anyway.

Bigger and Better

Well it finally happened, I got a new computer, and for the first time in my life it's a Mac. Actually it's a little overwhelming. The screen is huge, it runs super smooth, and even though it's a Mac, I can still run Windows on it as well if I want, so I can still load up any of my old games if I want.

A new computer with a huge screen also means WoW looks amazing. I can bump up all the video settings with no lag whatsoever, and I'm pretty sure I don't have to worry about any graphics card conflicts or anything like that while I'm in the middle of a game.

On to the progress update. I have been leveling my shaman almost exclusively, only playing other characters when my friends are running instances and such. She's level 75 right now, and is just finishing up in Dragonblight, which puts her on track to hit 80 sometime in the next couple weeks depending on how much time I get to play.

I don't know why, but I'm really liking the shaman and the huge burst damage she gets with her enhancement build. Sometimes it's a little ridiculous. One swing of the mace and the enemy just lost half it's HP. Other times nothing procs and I'm stuck in a drawn out battle. Kinda interesting how that works.

I actually think that maybe the shaman could be my BG character. The burst damage, combined with spirit wolves to add a little damage while healing me, and my summonable elementals make it seem like a pretty good choice for a little PvP. It will take some practice though, I still get ganked all the time.

On a side note, Blackbare is getting much better geared. I've gotten lucky on some drops in various instances and he's slowly but surely getting there. He also managed to reach exalted with Sons of Hodir and is now able to get my shoulder enchants for me. They increased the rep gain on each turn in, so it doesn't take nearly as long as it used to. I think I was exalted in a couple weeks.

Not much else to update on right now. The pally has gained a few levels, but still in her 20s so not much to talk about there. For now I will concentrate on getting Avialle to 80 and then figure out what I want to do from there.

Classic!

That's right everybody, Blackbare is now a Classic Dungeonmaster!

Alright, maybe for a level 80 it isn't the most difficult task to complete, but before going for the achievement I had only been to maybe half of the instances the original game had to offer, but now I have seen them all, and I think I can understand why people are so drawn to it.

My first character I got to level 60 was my rogue, and this was before the first expansion, so I had a chance to run a few of the end game instances. My experience with it wasn't too great. Being a rogue it was very difficult to find a group, as there was never a shortage of DPS characters needing groups.

Now I get to see them in sort of a different light. Sure I can blow through them really quick on my own, but trying to think about what it would be like for a group of level 60's trying to make their way through one of those instances makes it very interesting.

I'm able to skip so many mobs, the loot doesn't matter, and the bosses go down easily for me. An instance like BRD was just so big, I can't imagine working my way through it at that level. I really can see why instances have become more and more streamlined starting with the first expansion. They were big and epic before, but just took too much time for me to want to run through them constantly.

Next up, time to get my hunter ready to solo Heroic Underbog, or get a better attempt in at least. She'll be questing in the Storm Peaks first, then moving on to Icecrown if her turtle pet hasn't hit 80 by then. The new patch just decreased the amount of experience for a pet to gain a level too, so this should go more quickly than it was.

Besides that, I plan on taking my druid to the new Heroic instances with my guild, and hopefully get some crazy gear out of it. Blackbare has really become my instance guy, and the funny part is that since we have such a good tank in the guild that leads us through, I end up running everything in cat form as DPS. Not really what I expected his role to be, but hopefully I can eventually get an off-spec set and go boomkin as my dual spec. Oh that would be sweet. I wouldn't mind trying healing either at some point.

Retro WoW

So in the process of going for the Classic Dungeon Master achievement, I also joined my guild and a few others for a run of Blackwing Lair. It was quite the experience, and now I know that I would have never been able to raid in vanilla WoW.

The group itself wasn't bad. We had some well geared people who knew the instance, and the rest were just along for the ride. The first hickup we had was attunement. Sure you don't have to be attuned anymore, but without it you have to run through UBRS to get in. We decided to just become attuned.

Well we eventually did it, but only after I got stuck along with two others at one part behind a gate that apparently doesn't open after the boss is killed. So we had to get summoned back and run back through the instance. One player even fell into the lava in Blackrock Mountain and we pretty much left him to catch up with us.

So we're all attuned and make our way into BWL. This is quite the instance. Lots of different mechanics for the boss fights. With 11 level 80s we didn't really have much trouble with the fights, it was the other players we had problems with.

One of them pretty much singlehandedly held up the party for a good half hour or more as he had died in the instance, released (after we told him not to), and came back, only to be killed by respawns from the first boss' room. When we went back to rez him his body was nowhere to be found, and so he had to run back again.

This wouldn't be so bad, except that he didn't get attuned somehow, so the run back wasn't just to the beginning of BWL, but to UBRS, and then you have to run through that to the entrance to BWL. It was quite the ordeal, and all I could do was sit there and wish we hadn't waited for him.

It got me thinking about the 40-man raids people used to do at level 60, and the horror stories I heard about them. With all the troubles we had with just one person out of 11, I don't know how the 40-man groups ever made it. Sure if it was all in the guild you probably are all on the same page, but even then there are hold ups, and after this weekend I really don't think I'd have the patience for stuff like that.

In the end we got through it, but it took an hour and a half, and I went into it expecting to spend less than an hour. At least I can cross that off the list of old world content I want to see that I never got the chance to before.

Next up: finish the last few dungeons for the Classic Dungeonmaster achievement. I tried BRD with my friend this weekend as well, but we got lost, as neither of us has done it before, so I think we might have to use a walkthrough. We're n00bs...

Can't fight it

I knew I'd be drawn back into this game at some point. For a while there I was just questing every so often when I really had nothing better to do, but I now find myself with more goals to accomplish that are actually attainable for me.

First off, I want to beat all the classic dungeons. Right now I'm working my way through everything but the level 60 stuff, and the last ones I need are Sunken Temple and Zul Farrack, which will be easy enough for an 80 druid. Next up comes level 60 5-man content, which should also be easy to solo. Luckily I've already done all of Dire Maul, that place took forever, I don't know how people did it in vanilla WoW.

Last on the list would be the raid content. At this point I'm not sure how this will go at my level. Can I solo it? Do I need help? And how much help do I need? Anybody experienced with this that has some advice?

Next up is getting epic flying for all my 80s, which is just going to take lots of money, so that goal is pretty straightforward.

Last on the list at this point is getting a Cenarion War Hippogryph for my hunter. This will require running the Coilfang Reservoir instances on Heroic a lot, and I expect I won't be able to get help every time, and I can't do it myself with what I have right now, so I am working on making my hunter good enough to solo it.

How am I doing that, you may ask? Well first I switched to a tenacity pet for the better survivability. Before I had used a core hound, but now I brought out the turtle. Only problem is I need to level it up to 80 now, so I just plan on questing more. More money for me and XP for my turtle at the same time.

I also crafted the entire PvP hunter set with my druid and sent it over. Took a while to farm all that leather, but now that it's done I have the recipes to be able to deck out my shaman in the same gear when she hits 80. Sure it's not quite as good as stuff you'll pick up running instances, but it should do.

I'm hoping that will be enough, but right now I have no idea. I could very well finish all these tasks and then enter the instance, only to find out I still can't take it solo.

That being said, I think I might start blogging regularly again, so keep a look out!

Yes I'm still playing

It's been a looooong time since my last update, and I don't expect to be posting regularly anytime soon, but I've made some good progress recently despite my lack of time to play.

I've been pushing Keldreth to get up to level 80, and she's 79 right now. I expect she will be 80 by the end of the week. Going through Northrend as a hunter is very different than with my other characters. I can solo almost any elite quest, the regular mobs are never a problem and there is hardly any downtime. This makes for faster XP gain because I pretty much don't have to sneak by any enemies.

Right now I have just finished up in Zul Drak and have moved on over to Shalozar Basin. By the time I was at this point on either of my other 80s they were only around level 77 or 78, which meant that after finishing Shalozar they still had to do some questing in another zone to get the rest of the way. At this rate my hunter will be 80 before she even finishes up in this zone, leaving lots of quests and gold to be had from questing the higher level zones.

I have sort of put my Horde characters on hold. I like that I went through to level 40 on Kunzagah, the mage. Knowing that the entire old world will be reconfigured when the new expansion comes out, I'm glad I was able to play through much of this old world as Horde. I will probably save at least two characters to play through when the expansion comes out.

On a side note about the expansion, I'm very excited about the Worgen being a playable Alliance race. Sure they're pushing it on the lore to make it work, but that's not really something I ever cared that much about. As far as I'm concerned, if Blizzard writes some ridiculous lore to make they're games better, then I'm all for it.

I plan on making a Worgen Death Knight right off the bat, but I also want to quest their new starting zone, so I'll have to make another character for that, class TBD. It's going to be very interesting to see how the old world turns out with the release of the expansion, but it's been in need of some work for a while, and while we may lose those familiar quests that us alt addicts are used to, it opens up so much new stuff for us to explore and compare to how it was before. I predict it will be awesome.